EDUCATION: More to the dropout story than bad teachers
By Tim Louis Macaluso on May. 20th, 2008
The 50-page report, "Looking Beyond the Numbers By Listening to Our Students," is a compilation of six town hall-style meetings and 
individual interviews with city youth - some of whom had either dropped out of school or were at risk of dropping out.
According to the report, 62 percent of the participants said they dropped out "due to lack of teacher interest." But the students also discussed other issues that contributed to their decision to drop out: lack of parental support, teen pregnancy, truancy, and drug use. Student violence inside and outside the school was another major concern.
"I don't think anyone is saying that teachers don't care about their students," says school board member and local attorney Van Henri White. White commissioned the report, which was compiled by child advocate Mary Hale.
At a press conference last week at the Monroe County Jail last week, Hale and White said the nonscientific report was a look at "conversations with students." It was not, they said, a survey with specific questions that each student answered. Still, they said, the findings shouldn't be ignored.
"This is what some students said they were feeling at the time they made the decision to drop out," says White. "Many of these kids have problems that make it difficult for them to be good students, and they are saying no one showed any interest in hearing about those problems."
Mayor Bob Duffy, who has not seen the report, says bringing attention to the city's low graduation rate is the right thing to do. But he says he is concerned about the high number of city parents who are not instilling the importance of education in their children.
"The best educators are mothers and fathers who teach their kids from birth," says Duffy. "We are a community that is rich in programs and poor in results. And we are increasingly looking to government for all of the solutions to our problems. A lot of the solutions start at home. No parent should find it acceptable that their child comes home and says he or she is dropping out of school."
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Ismael on May 27th, 2008
I think its fairly obvious that "two parent" families who demand excellence in school will be the best thing for a kid, but what about a kindergarden-er who has a high school aged mom, who dropped out, does drugs and no father who "finds it unacceptable that their kid has decided to drop out of school"? I'd like to know what is the solution for that REAL AND GROWING problem in the city schools, actually in the culture of the city itself. And at the risk of sounding like i am stereotyping, when 60+ (SIXTY) % of kids are dropping out of school, i think its safe to say that it is a cultural phenomenon. What are Rochester and Monroe County leaders doing to put a stake in the ground?