Published: 06-25-08
Dropout Recovery Should Include All Qualified Providers
Remarks by Peggy Venable Director Americans for Prosperity-Texas at the TEA Hearing on June 25 2008 in Austin
We have a problem in public schools in Texas and across the country. Right here in America every 29 seconds another student gives up on school resulting in more than one million high school students dropping out every year. Every hour of every day 93 Texas students drop out of public schools. The majority are inner city minority males.
It is a story that goes largely untold because these are not the children of the powerful or politically connected. And it doesn’t have a happy ending.
The numbers represent more than the failure of a one-size-fits-all system of education but a tremendous cost to our economy and an even greater human tragedy as many of these dropouts slip between the crevices of productive society.
According to the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis the 2007 class of high school dropouts in Texas will cost state taxpayers $377 million this year and every year over the course of their lifetimes. The real travesty is our inability to provide educational options to students most vulnerable.
It seems the public school officials are worried that some of the $50 million in funding which is result of the HB 2237 could actually go to – horrors of all horrors – private schools.
Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert Scott is right to offer grant money to qualifying providers – including those in the private sector. After all if the current public education system could educate these students they would have done so. They had their chance and they have another opportunity still with the dropout recovery pilot project.
But it’s time to provide the opportunity for alternative education providers too.
Recent dropout numbers don’t lie. We are miserably failing a very vulnerable student population and it is time we think – and act – outside the box.
Albert Einstein is reported to have said: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It’s time we try something different to get different results. Some children’s futures – and perhaps their lives – depend on it.
