|
 Parents
and educators are urged to pay attention to dropout risk factors
Eight
key triggers have been linked to greater risks of dropping out
The
numbers are staggering: One in five children locally is at risk
of dropping out before ever completing a high school degree.
Nationally, the numbers are even worse, with almost one in three
students joining the nation's dropout ranks.
"We
cannot afford to ignore the trends," says HFM BOCES Assistant
Superintendent Dr. Lorraine Hohenforst. "Behind every one of
those numbers is a real student whose opportunities will be
severely diminished for a lifetime because he or she did not
complete high school. And the collective price we pay as a
society when this many students drop out is also high."
The
key to solving this problem, Dr. Hohenforst said, is to first
understand the "triggers" that lead students to dropping out.
While ultimately the decision to drop out of school is a
personal decision, Cornell University Professor Paul R. Eberts
has identified eight key risk factors that dropouts often have
in common:
•
Drug and alcohol use, smoking (including on school grounds)
•
Multiple sex partners (and/or higher frequency of sex and/or
unwanted sex)
• Poor grades
• Not
enjoying school
•
Feeling that "teachers don't care"
•
Little parental support
•
Suicide attempts
•
Feeling that there are no adults in the community to turn to for
support
Predicting the future
Long
before students reach high school, researchers say, educators
can predict with a fair amount of accuracy which individual
students are likely to drop out before graduating.
"Students don't just leave school out of the blue," Dr.
Hohenforst said. "In fact, researchers have found that students
who are at risk for dropping out of high school can be
identified as early as sixth grade and often earlier than that."
Key
warning signs include low attendance, little classroom
participation, poor grades in core subjects, and failure to be
promoted to the next grade level, according to a report by the
National High School Center, a division of the Washington-based
American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit organization that
conducts research on social and behavioral sciences.
Click here
to download a copy of that report.
The
study also found that eighth graders who miss five weeks of
school or who fail English or mathematics have at least a 75
percent chance of dropping out of high school.
Of
interesting note, Dr. Hohenforst said, is that some so-called
risk factors have NOT been associated with a higher risk
of dropping out. While it is important to address these issues
for other reasons when students experience them, she said, Dr.
Ebert's research indicates that the following have not been
linked to greater dropout risks:
•
Being disabled
•
Feeling discriminated against (especially minority women)
•
Coming from "non-traditional" family
•
Having personal gender-identification issues
•
Being from lower-income or minority families
•
Feeling alone |
