Staggering high school drop out rate

Discussion Open Forum
1

I hated high school. Given how nasty it was, I understand why kids would want out. I have a much harder time understanding why high schools and education ministries have done so poorly adapting to retain students.

[quote=“Globe and Mail”]Alberta’s hot economy is putting money into people’s pockets. But it’s also pulling the kids out of school, leaving Alberta with the lowest high-school graduation rate of any province, according to a Statistics Canada report released yesterday.

Alberta shows the only increase in school enrolment in the country, because young people with children or of child-bearing age have moved there in search of good jobs and in sufficient numbers to trump the effect of the falling birth rate across Canada.

But the same enticing job prospects also appear to be luring young Albertans out of the classroom, said Patric Blouin, author of the report entitled Summary Public School Indicators for the Provinces and Territories, 1999/2000 to 2005/2006.

Only 67.9 per cent of young Albertans in 2005-06 stayed in school long enough to graduate, somewhat better than the 63.6 per cent in 1999-2000. Only the northern territories posted lower percentages.

This is particularly galling in a province that has been able to boast having one of the country’s most innovative public school systems.

Kathy Telfer, a spokeswoman for Alberta Education, said the numbers aren’t as bad as they look, because many dropouts later return to complete high school. For example, if young Albertans are tracked for five years after they enter high school in Grade 10, their graduation rate is actually 79.5 per cent, Ms. Telfer said.

But she also acknowledged in an interview yesterday, “We knew we had to do better.” And she said the province and local school boards have done a lot of work in recent years, developing programs to keep young people in school.

The national high-school graduation rate was 72.1 per cent in 2005-06, down slightly from the 1999-2000 figure of 73.8 per cent.

The highest rates of all were in the Atlantic provinces, where Mr. Blouin suggested young people are more inclined to stay in school because there are too few good jobs to tease them out. In other words, where money to be made in the fishery once lured the boys of Atlantic Canada out of school, now, on the other side of the country, money to be made from the tar sands is luring the boys - and the girls - out of Alberta’s schools.[/quote]

2

Does it really matter if they don’t graduate from high school? If they’re happy working in the tar sands, then surely that’s their business. Not exactly a national crisis.

3

Until those jobs are gone and these guys are 40 years old and without marketable skills or the ability to acquire such skills. Then it’s the east coast fishery all over again.
If not a national crisis, it’s certainly a regional or provincial one.

4

Well that’s their decision to make and risk to take. I’m sure their local career counselors have done all they can. You can’t exactly make a law against high schoolers applying for jobs in the tar sands, can you? Especially in Canada, the last place on earth which really takes human rights seriously from cradle to grave.

I’m not sure that under skilled 40 year olds constitutes a crisis of any magnitude.

5

In The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs talks about how cities grow. She says they grow by making new work (i.e., by invention and innovation). Of course it’s possible for a high school dropout to make new work, but usually new work is made by someone who is familiar with the old work, i.e., someone with knowledge, regardless of where the knowledge comes from. That’s where I think we’re going to run into problems in the future: We may end up with a large body of people who have so little in the way of knowledge that they might not be able to do the work we have, much less make new work.

I certainly disliked it and wanted out as soon as possible. But I had no idea what to do. In 1968, I bought the (1966) Mothers of Invention album Freak Out! Somewhere in the liner notes of the album, Frank Zappa wrote,

There was something appealing about the above, but I didn’t have any guts, so I finished high school. :laughing: But it would be ages before I acquired any marketable skills, so I got a little taste of what you guys have been discussing.

It’s not so much about high school, it’s more the questions, What are these folks going to do? How are they going to make it? How are we going to make it?

I’m too old to get too worried about it, but I think it is cause for concern.

6

I’m not sure that under skilled 40 year olds constitutes a crisis of any magnitude.[/quote]

Did you read the full article to which I linked? I refer you to the final three paragraphs:

[quote]But in the Atlantic provinces, which have low immigration and continuing economic uncertainty, the decline in enrolment and in the number of school-age children is horrendous - nearly 20 per cent in Newfoundland and Labrador, the highest in the country.

An education official in the province who asked to speak only for background said it is increasingly common to find outport communities without any children under 5.

He said the decline in enrolment is starting to smooth out after the catastrophic out-migration from the province in the 1990s. The economy is improving, and more young Newfoundlanders are choosing not to leave. But the schools will continue to experience declining enrolment for some time to come because so many people of child-bearing age have left the province.[/quote]

“It is increasingly common to find outport communities without any children under 5.” That’s a description of full-scale economic collapse. In your books, does that qualify as a crisis?

Alberta is in no way as dependent on the energy sector as Newfoundland was on the fishery, but thanks to the recent energy sector-led population boom, the numbers of those who would be affected are roughly equal. That’s a huge problem. In B.C., the major threat came from a downturn in the forestry sector, and now construction. Fortunately (ha), we’ve got the new B.C. Bud sector to pick up the slack. In Ontario, it’s the auto workers.

Boom sectors offering good wages to low-skilled workers are great, until the inevitable bust arrives. When those booms sweep up huge numbers of low-skilled, poorly educated workers, that becomes a huge social problem.

Whether you’re concerned about that or not, a 70% success rate in graduating students from high school is pathetic for a G8 country.

7

I’m from Louisiana, so I know a little about that. Societies with monoculture-type economies (or ones that rely on a very small number of industries) eventually become societies with more than their share of misery.

8

I’m curious: how did you come across Jane Jacobs?

9

My stock came from the northeast of Scotland, which collapsed with the decline of the herring industry at the end of the last century – oops, I mean the LAST last century. Yet here I am, undereducted, over-opinionated and with an utterly foul tongue. Communities establish, thrive, prosper, decline and die. Why should Newfoundland be any different?

10

A friend of mine, or his mom, lent me a copy of it back in the 1970s. I didn’t finish it, though.

I also read part of–and didn’t finish–The Death and Life of Great American Cities, another book by Jacobs.

I was leading a very disorderly life at the time. :laughing:

Hmmm, I’m still leading a very disorderly life. . . . . :ponder:

11

Woops, hit quote instead of edit, changing “there” to “their.” Sorry, mods.

Well, why not post?

That’s depressing. I mean, does it have to be that way? Why can’t a community be, like, resurrected?

12

[quote=“Jaboney”]Until those jobs are gone and these guys are 40 years old and without marketable skills or the ability to acquire such skills. Then it’s the east coast fishery all over again.
If not a national crisis, it’s certainly a regional or provincial one.[/quote]
What does it matter? Not everyone is cut out to be an astronaut. These guys aren’t going to make much in the strip joints. Canada doesn’t want to import illiterate Mexicans to work the oilfields; when a kindhearted soul in Florida started handing out Canadian immigration forms to them, the Windsor government threw a screaming tantrum about it.

They can either go pump oil or print out a fake degree and go flood the market in Taiwan for teaching English.

So whaddayagonnadoabouddit?

13

So? If you’ve read any reasonable amount of Farley Mowat (hell, he’s only your #1 national treasure of an author), you’d know that the Canadian government has been trying to crush the “outport communities” for at least the last fifty years, doing its utmost to forcibly relocate those people to the cities so that they can live in poverty under a proper welfare system.

Dude, this is what your government WANTS. You as a loyal Canadian are obliged to support it fully.

14

Mexicans are pretty literate, FYI. There’s only a 7 percentage point difference in literacy between Mexico and its two northern neighbors. And 100% of my 6th grade class in Mexico could spell potato, whereas even high-level elected officials up north tend to have trouble with simple words like that. :wink:

15

I have no idea why that constitutes full scale economic collapse.

[quote]Alberta is in no way as dependent on the energy sector as Newfoundland was on the fishery, but thanks to the recent energy sector-led population boom, the numbers of those who would be affected are roughly equal. That’s a huge problem. In B.C., the major threat came from a downturn in the forestry sector, and now construction. Fortunately (ha), we’ve got the new B.C. Bud sector to pick up the slack. In Ontario, it’s the auto workers.

Boom sectors offering good wages to low-skilled workers are great, until the inevitable bust arrives. When those booms sweep up huge numbers of low-skilled, poorly educated workers, that becomes a huge social problem.[/quote]

Can you explain the social problem? I would have thought that giving work to huge numbers of low skilled poorly educated workers was much better than having them wander the streets being antisocial, whilst surviving on government welfare.

If you let people have choices, they’re going to make choices you don’t like.

16

In numerous communities, every young person – those not tied down – opts to leave, such that there are no longer any young children in those communities… either they all got bored and decided to pick up sticks, or they’ve been driven out. (Being drawn out by external forces would not be so effective.) Let that situation persist for ten or fifteen years, so that the youngest members of these communities will be in their 40s or 50s; will that look like an economic collapse, or only when the last residents die out?

If these industries were sweeping up existing masses of low-skilled, poorly-educated workers, that’d be great. And to the extent the Albertan oil boom is employing uprooted and transient Newfies, it’s a godsend. But as the drop out rate shows, it’s not just sweeping up low-skilled, poorly-educated workers: it’s creating them by luring kids out of school prematurely. That’s a problem. They’ve got good jobs today. Dropping out of school to take those jobs is a significant reason why tomorrow they’ll be more likely to be wandering the streets being antisocial, whilst surviving on government welfare.

Give people a choice and without a doubt, some will make poor ones. But the fact that 3 in 10 are making a very poor choice is probably a signal that the virtues of the best choice aren’t being communicated well, don’tcha think?

17

That’s because potato is spelled differently in grad school. That’s the price of a good education.

18

[quote]Canadian government has been trying to crush the “outport communities” for at least the last fifty years, doing its utmost to forcibly relocate those people to the cities so that they can live in poverty under a proper welfare system.
[/quote]

So you are suggesting the Canadian government wants more people to use welfare and become a drain on society?

19

That’s because potato is spelled differently in grad school. That’s the price of a good education.[/quote]

hee hee!

I gotta say, though, that I’m not at all convinced of the quality of a high school education these days, anyway. Seeing as how I’m studying to be a teacher, this is a tragic confession. I can’t speak about Canada, but my own high school–the one where I graduated–has become a place that I would not want to send my son. I don’t know if my standards have risen. Actually, that’s very possible to likley, but–for sure–the standards of my high school have been drastically lowered to the point that it must be a challenge to fail.

Having a high school diploma will help with getting into uni, but other than that? The uni where I graduated must now offer non-credit classes in math and English in order to teach new freshmen what they should have known upon graduation. They say they’re going to stop offering them, but they’re afraid that they will attract too few students. The nearest full university to the one where I graduated is the one I’m now attending–fifty miles–yet, they worry about a lack of students who are actually academically prepared for university, and with good reason.

If those kids can find good work in the oil industry, why should they not? Those jobs may dry up, but is there anyting else/better waiting for them when they graduate? If they’re looking at taking this job now, or having slim chances of something else later, I can’t see the problem with them taking the job now. If the jobs dry up, they can always go back to school later on. If the jobs last until they are in their 40’s, then hopefully, they will have saved and invested and at least have something they can work with. And you know, even when you can hit almost 100% graduation, lots of those students will go no further than the local oil field, or construction site, or nursing home, or whatever, anyway. These kids are just getting theirs while the getting is good. I don’t see this as a problem of the jobs existing to pull them away–it’s a problem of the government not having enough other real options in place for them.

At least, that’s what it sounds like to me. And from the number of Canadians I’ve met working as English teacher in Asia, I get the idea that lack of substantial employment options has been a problem in Canada for many years.

20

I went to high school in Alberta (1000 km away from my parents) and absolutely loved it. I slept in class, worked as a dishwasher at Red Robins for two years (hardest job I ever had but I’ve never forgot it as I’ve moved up in the world), let off stink bombs in the hallways, egged a lot of freshmen and women (froshing :smiling_imp: ), talked back to teachers, made people laugh, skipped a lot of classes, spent a night in the drunk tank, and just barely graduated. I look back on these years as some of the best in my life. I learned about surviving on my own (albeit with parental funds). I really pulled up my socks in university (after tending bar in the UK and backpacking solo around Turkey at 18). When I saw people in university acting crazy, I felt grown up cuz I went through that at 15.

For me, high school was 70 percent social and 30 percent academic.The Catholic School System in Alberta is especially strong. I wonder if the StatsCan Study separated the two (Public and Catholic). I’d be willing to bet that the dropout rate for the Catholic System is significantly lower. Better teachers and a much richer school board.

I think it is normal for certain types of people to drop out of school to work when there is a huge boom. These people are often walking into 20 or 30 dollar an hour jobs. If the economy weakens significantly, you’ll be seeing many of these workers returning to school for skills upgrading. In Alberta, the economy is so much stronger than other places in Canada (better than most American states even in terms of GDP per capita), many students are probably anxious to get out in the “real world” and make good coin. Of course, I think they are thinking only about the short term and it would make sense for them to complete high school (as insurance for when the economy slows or as a building block to something better). With such good wages for many people these days, what kind of “carrots” can schools offer to make people remain in school? Some people function better in the real world (with its sink or swim mentality) than in the protected school society anyways. Certainly a challenge for the school boards, but I don’t think people should think these results are indicitive of poor teaching. I think Albertan teachers are world class (particularly the Catholic teachers), and I’ve attended world class schools in Europe, Australia, and North America.