The Educational Pipeline
From the Pew Partnership for Civic Change - Learning to Finish Wiki
The Learning to Finish Wiki is a web site that fosters collaboration between parents, educators, community members, researchers, and students toward lowering the dropout rate.
Nearly the entire web site can be edited and updated by users eager to share the challenges they face and solutions that work.
Learn the basics of how to use this web site.
Learning to Finish on the Dropout Epidemic:
Imagine a nationwide epidemic so severe that it strikes one in three teenagers and so malignant that few ever recover from it. The epidemic results in cascading costs for communities and for the nation as a whole – an estimated $200 and $300 billion to cover the cost of those struck by this affliction each year. If such an epidemic existed, you would assume it would be front-page news, a top-of-the-agenda item for public action.
Sadly, such an epidemic already exists. Although it is apparent in most communities, it is, in the words of New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, “an under-recognized, underreported crisis in American life.” The problem is that large numbers of students drop out before finishing high school, with devastating consequences for them personally and for their communities.
A recent report from the Educational Testing Service entitled “One Third of a Nation” is one in a series of sobering assessments which demonstrate the extent of the problem. For the nation as a whole, only about two-thirds of all students who enter ninth grade graduate with a regular diploma four years later. Among poor, black and Latino youngsters, the likelihood that they will graduate is even smaller. In 2004, according to a report co-authored by the Urban Institute and the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, only 50 percent of black students, 51 percent of Native Americans, and 53 percent of Hispanic students graduated from high school.
