We Need To Know … We Don’t Want To Know

IS EDUCATION REALLY ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS TO All CHILDREN?

If so, where are the follow-up studies of those dropped on their heads by the schools? We don’t have information – at least not in any district or charter schools I know of – about the kids pushed out of schools. We like to call them “dropouts,” but they really are “push outs.” For whatever reason, these kids are damaged and forced out as soon as they reach the legal age to drop them. We need to track them. My state, known as the “Wild West of Charter Schools,” has what may be the highest push-out rate in the US. It is created by ideologies that have failed, but are still in place and never accountable.

There are no funds to repair the damages and help the push-out kids get caught-up. Few community colleges can provide the remedial work and tutoring necessary for these damaged human beings to master the essential skills and pass the GED – or at the least, get the basic skills necessary for employment. As it stands, few employers will hire them. The military doesn’t want them. They have no futures. We are creating a massive welfare generation of very angry alienated citizens.

Parents sold on school choice, pull their children out of comprehensive public schools and enroll them in partial schools in the hope that this choice will deliver a better education. Then two things happen: 1)The partial school works for their child and what has been left out of a comprehensive education may not hurt the child’s chances. 2)The partial school must show progress on test scores and college admissions. Kids that don’t perform well are most often dropped and kicked back to the district school. They arrive back in the district schools way behind the other students who have experienced teachers and a comprehensive curriculum. As they experience the failure built into this reality, they most often drop out, or fade until they are passed on to get rid of them.

Every education department must keep tract of and record, for the public record, the children deprived of a quality education. No one can ignore this crisis that affects so many of our young people. If, as a parent, teacher, or taxpayer you can not get the information about the numbers of children harmed by our schools, and know which schools – public or charter, then demand it!

Tests have been forced on our schools by those who buy into a business model for education and believe more data will make schools accountable and better. The irony is that they have not collected and analyzed the data about children failed by the schools as a result of failed ideologies.

If you have data about the children damaged by charter schools and district schools, please share it. Be specific. Don’t reveal personal data. Let’s inform our Nation and its leaders of this terrible waste. Share case studies.