To reverse dropout rate, think small

By Bonnie Harris

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the high school dropout rate. If you haven’t heard the latest numbers, here they are: 710 youth dropped out of Des Moines public schools last year, up from 505 the year before. The biggest jump was in the number of 11th- and 12th-graders who dropped out – 645 from 193 in 2005-06.

I don’t want to get into all the reasons why a teenager would decide to ditch high school forever. I’d rather talk about what we can do about it, like school and community leaders did just last night at a panel discussion hosted by Superintendent Nancy Sebring.

United Way of Central Iowa’s president, Shannon Cofield, was at the table last night and said something that really struck me: “When will our community say, ‘710 dropouts is unacceptable'? Through social will, we’ve made it unacceptable to smoke, drive drunk, drive without seat belts. We need that same strength of will around high school dropouts.”

So. Let me tell you why United Way of Central Iowa invests so much in preschoolers.

Half of all preschoolers in central Iowa aren’t ready for kindergarten by their first day of school. There are things they need to know – indicators, as we like to say around here – before they are truly “ready to learn” in school.

When I started working at United Way roughly 18 months ago, my twin boys were in preschool. They were brilliant, I thought. They could count and say their ABC’s, they knew colors and shapes. Future high school dropouts? Hardly, I thought. Clearly, they were academic wonders to behold.

Then I started learning about United Way’s work around school readiness. How children who start school behind typically stay behind, struggling in school on every level. How up until a child reaches 3rd grade, he is learning to read – but from then on, he is reading to learn. Did you know that a 4th grader’s reading ability is a direct predictor of his success in high school?

These are truths about our children’s academic futures, real facts based on real research. Once I knew what I was up against, I did what any responsible mother would: I drove my kids’ preschool teachers crazy. But I had to make sure they were ready for kindergarten. I knew there was too much at stake. Not just for them, for all of us.