Two Bloggers Who Attended a “Drop Out” Factory

We found a couple of bloggers who were willing to speak to the fact that they attended one of the schools deemed in a recent report to be dropout factories. I am sure there are others out there yet it was interesting to read these two.

Doug writing on his Masson’s blog site gives his thoughts thus:

<em>It’s been 18 years since I graduated from there, so maybe it has gotten a lot worse. But, when I was there, I felt like I had the opportunity to get one of the best educations anywhere. It helped –a lot– that my parents had taught me to value my education, that school work came pretty easily to me, and that my friends and their families viewed education in much the same way. When I went to college, I met a lot of students who had come from some pretty nice private schools, and I never felt like my education was inferior to theirs. I can’t speak for the other schools on the list, and I suppose I can only speak for Richmond High School as it was many years ago, but at the time, good educational resources were available to the students.

On the other hand, it was a big school - I graduated in a class of about 400, and I think there were about 2,200 students spread over four years. I don’t doubt that it’s pretty easy for a student to get lost in the shuffle there.

My guess Doug is that the school is every bit as good as it was then if not better.

Trent England writing on his libertylive.org blog offers:

Ten years ago, I graduated from Henry Foss High School in Tacoma. I chose to commute to the inner city school rather than attend my local, upscale high school in Gig Harbor. Today, Foss is in the news as one of our state’s 22 “dropout factories.”

The solution to America’s crisis in education is out there. Even amidst the “dropout factories,” some students are learning. The solution, however, is not as simple as dollars or buildings or lofty rhetoric. The solution is a culture that values learning more than labor union politics, government control, and other petty, counterproductive agendas.

These two writers offer a very interesting perspective regarding these schools, certainly not one that matches the public perception of the term “dropout factory.”