Anybody that takes the time to listen to kids would have already known this.
on March 9th, 2006 at 9:16 amSource: USAToday
A survey of high school dropouts offers a surprising view of why they don’t finish school. It finds that more than six in 10 were earning C’s or above when they dropped out, and nearly two-thirds say they would have worked harder if expectations had been higher.
In many ways, the findings aren’t unexpected. For example, about three-fourths say they would have stayed in school if they had to do it over again. But in other ways, the survey offers small, surprising glimpses into students’ worlds:
• 38% say they had “too much freedom” and not enough rules in school, which made it easy to skip class.
• 68% say their parents became more involved in their education only when they were on the verge of dropping out.
• 70% are confident they could have graduated if they had tried.
• 81% now believe that graduating from high school is important to succeed.
But Greene, whose research has included studies on dropout rates, cautions that students’ points of view represent only “a partial and possibly distorted picture.”
For instance, 69% of dropouts say they weren’t motivated, and another 47% say classes weren’t interesting. That is simply another way for students to say that their basic skills weren’t up to the task of high school-level work, Greene says. “Being in school seems like a big waste of your time because you don’t understand what’s going on. You can’t understand the material that’s being assigned to you.” (more…)
