As of 2007, there were twenty-two schools in Washington state that were considered “dropout factories.” A school is considered a dropout factory when more than 40 percent of entering freshmen drop out before their senior year.
What makes children drop out of school? Most of the “Dropout Factories” in the US are in high poverty areas and have a large number of minorities. In schools like Arlington, which have a 30 percent dropout rate, they don’t have any of these common factors for kids to drop out. Arlington is in a nice suburban area with eighty-seven percent of its students Caucasian.
They began implementing programs in 2007 to help reduce the dropout rate for students in Washington State. One was the Freshman Academy, which helps kids who didn’t do very well in middle school get expert advice and extra help with homework and class work. This program is designed for children to do well in school to give them the confidence that they can do well in school and graduate. Another program that was implemented was Link Crew. Link Crew is a student-run buddy program to help kids make friends. Children drop out of school less when they have friends who link them to school.
Schools have also hired dropout prevention specialists. These specialists are very good at keeping children in school. This is very important because the more you miss school, the more you fall behind in your school work, which in turn discourages children from finishing it due to missing out on critical classroom discussions that would have made homework/homework much easier. class. They are trying to discourage this by having these specialists speak to children and their parents door to door and by getting the police department involved to stop truancy.
If children start to do well in school and are proud to come home and show their parents their report cards, this will lead to lower dropout rates. If they have friends at school and are socially involved and don’t miss school, students will be motivated to stay in school. These programs have been shown to work because nine out of twenty-two schools have recently been removed from the “dropout factories” list.
To prevent your children from dropping out of school, keep them in school, make sure they are socially involved at school and with their friends, and get them tutoring if they are struggling with a particular subject. These programs are working for Washington, let’s give all of our kids the same head start for a successful and rewarding academic experience!
