According to Powell's group, nine teenagers will leave US public high schools without graduating in the time it takes to listen to this story. Research groups and state and federal education departments don't use the same statistical formula to track the problem. But by anyone's math, Cleveland's results are dismal. Studies over the last several years show that barely a third graduate from high school on time and close to half never graduate at all. And that has huge consequences not just for the dropouts, but for the community at large.
Colleen Wilber is one of the organizers of the Dropout Prevention Summit.
COLLEEN WILBER:: "We know that young people who drop out of high school are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to live in poverty, more than eight times as likely to be in jail. They're much more likely- to not have health insurance, to rely on social services and then have children who drop out, and so we're all paying those costs."
Wilber and other education advocates cite many causes -- poverty itself is one of the leading ones. Poor nutrition; lack of access to physical and mental health services; absent parents; kids being shifted from one caretaker to another; and then there's the low quality of urban schools themselves.
Cheryl Mays has something to say about that. She allowed her son to drop out when he was in middle school, after he had been suspended for his role in stealing a teacher's car.Now she has a daughter in fourth grade and may pull her out before high school -- if Cleveland schools don't improve.
CHERYL MAYS: "My daughter does her homework and the teacher just marks off that it was done. That's not success, that's compliance. Success is whether she did it and did it correctly."
Others look beyond the schools for solutions. Actor/comedian Bill Cosby will conduct a town hall session at the summit on Saturday. He has often drawn fire from others in the black community for laying the problem of failing schools at the feet of disinterested parents.
Cleveland school official Eric Gordon isn't saying Cosby is right, but he isn't saying he's wrong either.He says it's a delicate dialogue the community is about to have.
Gordon: "We've had dinner conversations at John Hay where we've actually walked through particular sections of his book and then asked people to respond. With Dr. Cosby. it is a hard message to hear but we really hope we can stay focused. We have some tough issues in front of us but we actually control a lot of our destiny...
collaboratively."
Colin Powell's group encourages schools to think about improving students overall environment in and out of school.
In fact, lots of different approaches are being tried around the country to reduce the dropout rate. Some communities have organized door to door canvassing to find kids who've dropped out and try to charm them -- or prod them into coming back to school. Sometimes these campaigns involve home visits from school administrators and teachers to talk to the parents; other cities have increased enforcement of truancy laws, fining the parents as a way to motivate their involvement with their kids. More tutoring and mentoring and counseling are also frequently proposed remedies. Today and tomorrow Clevelanders have an opportunity to see what they can do.
Kymberli Hagelberg, 90.3