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"About schools the media report the present with no apparent historical awareness that it’s the same story once again." Perhaps many of Ed Week's readers will remember this comment from Gerald Bracey's "Education's Groundhog Day" in Commentary of February 2, 2005. He was speaking of the poor math achievement of US students compared with their peers in other countries, and what this meant in regard to this nation’s lost competitiveness.

I recalled Bracey's article while just recently reading another series of articles in our national news media about the dropout crisis in our public schools, especially the schools in our inner cities. Clearly the writers of these articles had little or no apparent historical awareness that this "crisis," if you will, has been with us at least since 1969, the year that the ratio of diplomas awarded to the number of 17-year-olds in the population was at its highest point.

Since that year this ratio has been in decline, and severely so in our large cities with large impoverished and minority populations. Today, for example, we learn that in Detroit the graduation rate, meaning the percent of entering freshmen who complete four years of high school in four years, is 25.

That does sound like a crisis, doesn't it. And readers with no more historical awareness than the writers are appalled and want to know what our leaders are going to do about it.

Should, shouldn't we all, as the educational leaders in the city of Houston are doing, go out into the neighborhoods and knock at the doors of students who are staying away from school and try to persuade them, with carrots (payment for school attendance) rather than sticks, to return?

If I hadn't read about this crisis over and over again throughout a good part of my own life, I might have joined the good people of Houston out there in the neighborhoods, knocking at the doors, but I'm now convinced it's wrong, all of it, not only the solutions proposed, the knocking on the doors and such like, but even more important the fashion in which the problem has been posed.

In my opinion we no more have a dropout problem than we have an attrition problem, say, at West Point. However, in regard to the public schools, if not West Point, we certainly do have a dropout industry to which untold numbers of educators, ed schools, and politicians are contributing an unending series of reforms, reforms that so far have been without measurable effect, let alone success.

Not a year goes by, not six, even three months, that we don't read headlines such as the following, these all taken from news articles appearing on the very same day, October 23, of this year:

The High School Dropout's Economic Ripple Effect,
Mayors Go Door to Door, Personally Encouraging Students to Stay in the Game for Their Own Good — and for the Sake of the City. (the Wall Street Journal)
2,500 dropouts a week in Texas Public Schools! (the San Antonio Express-News)
Report: Kids less likely to graduate than parents (the Associated Press)
School Diploma = $18K More Pay, the High Price Of Dropping Out (the Lancaster New Era).
Twice as Many High School Dropouts Unemployed & Living in Poverty Than Diploma-Holding Peers (the PR Newswire).
Dropout Battle Needs More Help (The Santa Fe New Mexican).

Why is the use of the term dropout in regard to our public schools so widespread? There isn't a program or school in the country that doesn't lose members of its entering class. Be it the Marines, the Air Force Academy, Harvard University, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Julliard School of Music, and if I were to do the research I might find that in some cases the “dropout” or attrition rate were higher than that of the Detroit Public Schools.

And at these schools, as at most places, those who for whatever reason leave are not treated as dropouts, as failures, as having given up their chances for a better life. In most cases everyone accepts that they simply made a wrong choice and that when they realized it they corrected their earlier mistake.

Of course there are major differences between the public schools and the institutions, and any number of other similar, mentioned. For the most part the kids in our public high schools haven't chosen to be there, and it’s much more remarkable, I think, that so many of them do choose to finish something they never chose to undertake. In this regard dropping out seems to me entirely normal.

We, society, have turned this highly normal and understandable situation into a problem by insisting that the kids should stay where they are. Why? When will public high school, which is at present mostly a word and number skills preparation for college, be seen as something not for all kids, not even perhaps for the majority, but strictly for the minority who want, or in a number instances whose parents want, that preparation?

Our mistake has been, at least since the beginning of the so-called dropout problem, and probably well before, to provide nothing for these kids for whom book learning, algebra, essay writing etc. are just not very interesting, not something they want to have for themselves.

To immediately do away with the dropout problem we need only to provide young people with a wide variety of realistic career paths, reflecting the seven or more intelligences or talents one or more of which all kids, possess.

The reasons most often given for why kids should stay in school and why dropping out is bad are principally two. First, those who stay in school and obtain their diploma will obtain better jobs and have higher life time earnings than those who don't. While that finding on the face of it does seem to be without dispute it probably mostly follows from the fact that we provide so little in the way of realistic career paths for those who quit school. And given that how could they possible make out better than those who don't?

Second, our nation is in competition with other nations for new sources of jobs and wealth, and it may very well be true that the greatest source of new jobs and new wealth be the educational attainment level of the population. The most skilled and resultantly best paid jobs will go to where the people are best able to perform them, for high job performance does relate directly to one's educational level.

High school dropouts as currently categorized and compartimentalized in our society will not help us to be more competitive in the race for a larger share of the world's economic wealth. But new jobs and new wealth, while important is only one of the things that life is all about. By making it the be-all and the end-all we have created the dropout problem.

This is the kind of reasoning that is the source of the "crisis" talk. This is why, our making  earning power and economic competitiveness all important, we have a dropout industry. As long as we pose the problem in this fashion nothing will change and we'll go on, as Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, living the same day over and over again.

How was it in the movie that Bill Murray did finally break out and move on to a new day? In his case it was by an attitude, a radical change in how he saw the world and especially the people about him.  For when he was able to value others for themselves, when he was able to recognize the worth of others, and no longer be so entirely wrapped up in himself, then he could move on and live with others, one new day after another.

The realization that we need to come to, similar to that arrived at by Bill Murray in the movie, is that not everyone should take the same path, most often that of preparation for college, in order to have a good life. The realization is that there are, while perhaps not as many paths as there are people, many more paths than we are currently providing for
our kids in our public schools.

For the time being anyway dropping out is probably a good thing. It does show, if nothing else, a resistance to an otherwise all powerful school establishment, as well as an independence of spirit, the recognition and acceptance of which could become the basis of a complete restructuring of our public schools.

If dropping out was considered no less acceptable than staying in, graduating, and going on to college, the problem would disappear overnight.

And dropping out ought to be no less acceptable especially when by staying in kids have to continue to pretend that a college prep program interests them.

What is out there for those who do drop out, or who may want to drop out but don’t? That’s what should be on our minds. But it’s not, and instead we go on trying to motivate kids to acquire sufficient math and English language skills to pass a test and thereby earn a high school diploma.

Have we helped them by doing so?

Well, yes, if you go by the numbers demonstrating that those with a high school diploma will get a better paying job than those without.

But innumerable other things, such as being in possession of good work habits, may be more important than any diploma, and there’s no reason why those who drop out of school can’t be in possession of good work habits.

We know that dropouts are highest in urban schools where SAT and ACT scores are lowest. We know that dropouts are highest where poverty is greatest, that dropouts are highest among Latino and African American minority student populations.

The “liberal” approach to the problem is to improve the conditions of kids’ lives in these urban schools believing that kids will then stay in school. And this is probably true.

Isn’t that what has happened in our suburbs? By and large we have eliminated poverty in the suburbs (or rather those who now live in the suburbs left poverty behind them in the inner city) and higher percentages of suburban kids remain in school and graduate.

This is the route that some reformers would take, somehow place inner city kids in schools that do not have large majorities of poor kids, busing them to the suburbs, for example, as in the METCO program in Boston, or in similar programs such as the one in Wade County, NC.

But so far all of our reforms have done little or nothing to decrease the numbers of inner city kids who are dropping out of school, not finding a decent job, and in too many instances joining the growing population in our prisons.

Isn’t it time to question whether our policy of one academic, college prep education for all is worth pursuing? Whether vocational or other programs might be more appropriate for many young people, returning thereby to an earlier period in the country’s history when job and work preparation was no less reputable than preparation for college?

There have always been those who have held the position that college was not for everyone. Further education, some form of training, skill acquisition, yes, but not an academic program which at the present time we’re imposing on all of our students.

The most common reason giving for dropping out of school is math, although it could have been reading, writing, or history or foreign languages, if the latter had been given the importance that math now has in our society, if not in our culture.

It’s true that science, applied science and engineering, all of which are based on math literacy, have most of all accounted for the great material progress of our age. But why is it necessary to push all children to become “literate” in these areas?

Is there anything wrong with our allowing a minority of math and science talented individuals to account most of all for the technological progress that benefits all of us?

This siituation doesn’t bother us in other fields, where only small minorities of gifted individuals carry the weight for us all, in music, basketball, and other athletic endeavors, in art, and in fiction and non-fiction writing, for example.

If nothing else we are a nation of specialists. Why go on for the first 18 years or more of our young peoples’ lives, expecting them to become more knowledgeable and skillful in certain academic disciplines that are of little interest to them?

Why not at a much earlier age pay greater attention to the individual’s gifts, for not only are all created equal, but all are in possession of something unique and important.  At the present time our college for all program results in many young people losing their belief in their own uniqueness and importance.

Even an otherwise admirable effort, such as Bob Moses’ Algebra or algebra for all Project, has probably done more harm than good. This should have been accompanied by a Music for all Project, an athletics for all project, and innumerable other such programs or projects. In respect to an individual life is algebra really more important than music or athletics? Certainly not.

Look at the many minority and innercity and poor children who don’t graduate with their class, and at the even more among those who, while they do graduate on time, are no less convinced that they are not students, don’t know much, aren’t going to succeed in their future endeavors.

And why? Often for silly reasons like they still have trouble adding fractions, or calculating percentages, or are unable to write an decent essay. The tragedy is, of course, that there were many other things that they could have done well, successes that they could have taken with them from their school years, instead of the feeling that they hadn’t accomplished much in school, nor would accomplish much in their lives in the future.

Most news items, especially local items such as fires, homicides, and the inevitable scandals involving our business, political, and religious leaders, are not really new, or news, but further re-occurrences of myriad and alike past events. As one grows older one realizes this about the news, and in fact, those of us who still read the print publications, prefer the opinion pages where at least someone is trying, although probably in vain, to say something for the first time.

It’s probably no less true that for most of us each new day is not new but a repeat of the day before. This is easily seen when someone asks us to describe a day in our lives. One day we can do, but to describe a second day, that is not just a repeat of the first, is more difficult.

There is a character in the movie Groundhog Day, Meteorologist Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, who alone in the movie realizes that each day is a repeat of the day before. He’s caught but unlike the other characters he knows it, and in order to eventually free himself from the endless, lifeless repetition of his acts, he has to become a different and better person.

Now it seems to me more and more that those who write about the schools are repeating, evidently unknowingly, things that have been said about the schools, probably since their founding in the 19th century, but certainly since the time of Sputnik when the schools suddenly became, wrongly of course, our best hope for our outperforming the Russians (and later the Chinese) in space and elsewhere.

Gerald Bracey made all this clear (for the first time?) in a Commentary article in Ed Week of February, 2005:

Media stories about public schools show the reporters as non-Bill Murray characters in “Groundhog Day.” In the 1993 movie, the same Groundhog Day repeats itself over and over again, but only Murray’s character sees the repetition. About schools, the media report the present with no apparent historical awareness that it’s the same story once again. As a consequence, Americans keep waking up to headlines declaring that, apparently for the first time ever, the public school sky is falling. The public doesn’t seem to notice the recurrences, either.

It seems, however, that the reporters did not read or hear what Bracey was saying. For just today I read two stories by writers for the Associated Press on the dropout problem, two stories that are almost word for word repeats of countless stories I have read during the past 30 years or more.

It’s not that the writers are wrong in what they are saying. It’s that what they are saying is not news but merely a repetition of the old. Also, and more important, what they are describing, the so called dropout problem, may not be the problem at all, but only a symptom of something else, the existence of which these reporters haven’t yet registered.

Although at first he didn’t know what it could mean Phil Connors in the movie Groundhog Day did see right away that each new day was exactly the same as the day before. Eventually he was able to move on. Whereas these and many other education writers don’t seem realize that what they are saying, in this instance about the school dropout problem, has been said many, many times before.

Yesterday the two AP writers, Nancy Zuckerbrod and Stephanie Reitz “woke us up” with these headlines respectively, “1 in 10 Schools are “Dropout Factories,” and “Mentoring, Alternative High Schools on Rise to Reduce Dropouts.” If you had never encountered the “dropout problem” you might be impressed by the use of the term “factory” in regard to dropouts, and by the “folk” wisdom of the use of mentoring and alternative high schools as a cure for the same.

The factory school analogy goes back at least to 1900. The first alternative schools, set up to provide a viable alternative education for those not being served well by the mainstream, probably go back just as far. I take from my own files this passage: “In 1987, the Boston Public Schools and the Mayor’s Office signed an agreement to fund a network of community-based, alternative education programs to provide options for students who were at risk of dropping out of high school.”

Mentoring on the rise? Maybe, but I don’t think so.  Mentoring is the very first thing that people do for others who need help in making life decisions. The Big Brothers Big Sisters programs are mentoring programs, in many instances with the expressed purpose of keeping at risk kids in school. These programs were founded over 100 years ago. If there is more mentoring it’s because there are more kids.

I take the following passages from the two articles mentioned:

“Most [dropout factories] have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around because their students face challenges well beyond the academic ones – the need to work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social services.”

“The fact that kids are entering high schools with such poor literacy skills raises questions about how much catch-up work high schools can be expected to do and whether more pressure should be placed on middle schools and even elementary schools…”

“Many of the state schools with high dropout rates are in lower-income, urban communities, where a teen’s academic success can be influenced by poverty or social problems in their families and neighborhoods.”

“Springfield superintendent Burke and several other educators say getting students to feel involved and interested is critical, and that schools should be centers of encouragement and high expectations rather than frustration and anonymity.”

If we had never read about the dropout problem we would be thoroughly persuaded by the truth of these observations. But we’ve heard these things over and over again, “forever” it seems.

I find myself responding to these and other similar articles in some combination of the following. First with boredom, because I’ve heard it all before. Then with tears of discouragement because so many good kids are still being mostly lost. For we are well aware of all the bad things that do happen to many of them following their dropping out of school. Indeed, that’s the source of our constant attempts to keep them in school, our fear for them, of what will happen otherwise.

Finally, I settle back into my long held conviction that the problem is not of the kids doing, but of our doing and of the schools themselves. In years past this realization led many radical reformers to want to abolish the schools entirely. And this may still be the best solution for many of our students at risk of dropping out.

In any case we ought to abandon the all out attempt to keep these kids in school, and rather assume that our schools, especially our middle and high schools, as presently structured are not the best place for them to be. Isn’t that obvious?

Alternative schools by and large have failed miserably, the exceptions to this being when by alternative we mean an alternative, a vocational program for example, to the college preparatory curriculum that is more and more imposed upon all of our young people. Mentoring programs, although positive and beneficial for other reasons, have also failed to keep kids in school.

Kids, probably half of our young people of high school age, are telling us that they don’t want to be in school as it’s presently constituted. Why don’t we listen to them, instead of devising schemes to somehow keep them in and from dropping out?

In the movie Phil Connors got out of the endless repetition of his days by seeing things differently and going on to live differently and better. We need to see school differently. We should be looking not first at the school and what we need to do to keep all of our kids in school, because we can’t. We should be looking first at the kids, and at what they need and what we might do to meet them on their own ground.

Many kids have been telling us, in my own experience for some 50 years now, that math, science, history and language classrooms are not what they most want and need. Why do we go on subjecting all of them to this regime that is probably only for some an appropriate use of their time? Well, in regard to school reform, we’re still living the same day over and over again, and, as a result of our not seeing further, nothing much is being changed for the better.