High school dropout crisis' continues in U.S., study says
According to WASHINGTON (CNN) Tue May 5, 2009, Nearly 6.2 million students in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 in 2007 dropped out of high school, fueling what a report released Tuesday called "a persistent high school dropout crisis." There is more to high school drop-out than meets the eye. There are a lot of outside influences that causes a student to drop out of school: Race, ethnicity, academic factors, school violence, grade retention, poor academic performances, relocating, behavior, absenteeism and feeling of insecurity.
Many students drop out of school for different reasons. Many think high school drop-outs are students who chose to give up but there a reason to their failures in school. Students, who feel like failures, have low self esteem and mental health issues are likely to drop-out because school seems to be too frustrating and stressful to try. One out of four high school students are likely to drop-out .There are many risk factors to possible high school drop-out which are low academic achievement, mental health problems, truancy, poverty and teen pregnancy
Students with mental health problem, disabilities and depressed are at risk of dropping-out of high school because many of them have been in and out of school because of their sickness. When they come back to school they have a lot of catching –up to do and this leads to frustration. Most time they start acting up simply because they do not understand the material. When this continues it can lead to depression then drop-out of school. This frustration and stress overwhelms them and they may begin to give-up on their education. High school students with symptoms of truancy, retardation and low intelligence are at high risk of dropping out of school. Truancy is a symptom that comes from mental health problems and learning disabilities. This makes them to feel like a failure, act out and get them selves thrown out of school. These Students are labeled as lazy because they do not know how to function in school and school frustrates them and act out on their frustration.
The Socioeconomic Background of the parent affects some students and eventually they drop out to get a job to support the family. Many students from low income family drop out more because of the economic problem and their parent not meeting the demand of their schooling.
Some student skips school a lot of times for reasons that is not sickness or family emergency and there by leading to poor attendance in school. They will always be behind in class work and home work getting poor grades and this will lead to failure causing them to repeat a grade or that course .This will make them to fall behind their counterparts being in a lower grade. Causing them to feel bad about it, causing low self esteem and eventually dropping out. An analysis, conducted by the school board's division of testing found out that many students were dropping out of school because they were demoralized in their school performance by being held back and attending classes with younger students or because they were fearful of not passing stricter Regents tests.
According to Colleen Wilber, a spokeswoman for the alliance, dropouts are not only a school problem; however, it also affects the community and society in general. The students that drop out of school will become a nuisance to their community and society, a burden to the government and relative, ending up in jail, be coming single parents, stays on welfare for ever, will not have health insurance and with all other things going on around them. According to the group’s research, dropouts from the class of 2007 will cost the nation more than $320 billion in lost wages, taxes and productivity over their lifetime.
Something needs to be done to make sure that students are not dropping out of school. Teachers needs to be more caring and not biased, government need to provide money to make sure that students from low income homes gets the supply they need to be able to be in school.