Disbelief

A couple of weeks ago the Tacoma News-Tribune ran an op-ed piece from Kent Vallier on what would happen if NCLB was applied to police officers. Yesterday came the rebuttal from the Department of Education, but near the top was one of those niggling little quotes that needs to be challenged:

Many dropouts say they weren’t sufficiently challenged in school, according to surveys.

Do you believe that? Because I don't think I do.

I've known kids that dropped out, and while many of them talked a good game (e.g., "Man, school's got nothing to offer me!") the reason most of them walked away was because they couldn't make it. You stick a survey in front of a dropout and ask him to tell why he did it, do you think most of these kids are really going to be honest? Will they admit that they had a reading disability, that their understanding of math was still at a 3rd grade level, that the basics of writing were never in their grasp? Do most teenagers (hell, most people in general) really have the understanding of self to admit, "You know, I couldn't handle high school because I couldn't handle the work."?

I doubt it. So we push the blame--"The teacher didn't push me hard enough!" "I was bored, so I tuned out!" "The curriculum wasn't responsive enough!" "The homework was boring!"

I'll be the first to say that our system needs to change, that it could do better for all kids. But when it comes to dropouts, they are the ones who left the system. And I don't think it's because they were bored.