This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Terry Stoops, Education Policy Analyst for John Locke Foundation.
Last week, our public schools celebrated Graduation Awareness Week (GAWk). GAWk marks the beginning of a statewide campaign to raise North Carolina’s 70 percent graduation rate.
For those who were unable to participate in the festivities, Graduation Awareness Week (GAWk) featured a number of events designed to “highlight graduation and to encourage community efforts to support students.”
• State education leaders launched “The Message: Graduate!” Web site to provide information and resources on graduation. One of these resources is a documentary called “InsideOut.” According to the Mattie C. Stewart Foundation, the documentary “presents a stark look at prison life — with inmates telling their personal stories of regret for not pursuing an education and graduating.”
• Students from two high schools in Wake County — Apex (90.1 percent graduation rate) and Green Hope (92.6 percent graduation rate) — signed pledges to stay in school and graduate. They also pledged to follow their dreams and become all they can be. (See student pledge card here.)
• State education leaders recognized eight public schools as part of the “100 Percent Graduation Rate Club.” It probably slipped their notice that six of the eight schools are schools of choice: Burke Middle College, Greensboro College Middle College, Early College at Guilford, Reid Ross Classical, Weaver Education Center, and Highland School of Technology. The Nantahala School and Cape Hatteras Secondary were the only traditional schools in the Club.
• State education leaders also awarded certificates to 10 mostly rural school districts with graduation rates ranging from 80.9 percent to 89.4 percent. In addition, 12 schools were recognized as having the highest graduation rates for schools of their size.
Of course, increasing the number of graduates does not address an even larger problem: many of those who graduate lack the basic skills to succeed in the workforce, or they are unqualified (or marginally qualified) to go to college. Strong American Schools, described as a “nonpartisan public awareness and advocacy effort,” recently released Diploma to Nowhere, a report that details the failure of America’s public schools to prepare students adequately for postsecondary education. According to the report, 1.3 million students were enrolled in postsecondary remedial courses during the 2004-2005 school year. A staggering 43 percent of students enrolled in public two-year institutions have taken one or more remedial courses, while 29 percent of students enrolled in public four-year institutions required remediation. Remediation efforts cost the nation’s public colleges (read: taxpayers) between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion per year.
A 2007 American Diploma Project report found that 9.5 percent of incoming freshmen in the UNC system enrolled in one or more remedial courses. But that statistic does not tell the whole story. Systemwide averages obscure disconcerting trends at individual campuses. According to state data, 16 percent of freshmen were required to enroll in remedial English courses at one UNC campus, while 36 percent of freshmen enrolled in remedial math courses at another state university. One campus had nearly half of its freshmen enrolled in one or more remedial courses.
At North Carolina’s community colleges, the situation is much worse. Nearly half of the incoming students require one or more remedial courses, which cost taxpayers an estimated $30 million a year. The Alliance for Excellent Education estimated that eliminating remediation in North Carolina’s community colleges would produce a $97.4 million net benefit to the state economy.
According to a report by the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, dropouts drain North Carolina’s resources to the tune of $169 million a year. Rather than grandstanding with events like Graduation Awareness Week (GAWk), state education leaders should, as I have said many times before, take the simple, yet overlooked, step of determining why students in North Carolina drop out in the first place.
As for the future of Graduation Awareness Week (GAWk), I have a few suggestions – make it a day, celebrate it in June, and call it commencement … OK, Graduation Attainment Day (GrAD).