Franklin Schargel’s Blog

According to Rural Policy Matters for November, 2009 the five states with the highest percentage of students enrolled in rural school districts are:

Maine                             54%

Vermont                        53%

South Dakota               51.3%

North Carolina            47.8%

Mississippi                    47.1%

Alabama is a close 6th with 41.4%

I would not have picked all of them.  It is interesting that North Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama are among the states with the highest number of students who do not complete high school.  Is there a correlation?

In a report issued by the Alliance for Excellent Education, which calculates what the dropout problem costs the country and each of the 50 largest metropolitan areas.  Check their website to see your city’s statistic.

If half the students who dropped out of the class of 2008 had graduated, they would have generated $4.1 billion more in wages and $536 million in state and local taxes nationally in one average year of their working lives, according to the new analysis.

The numbers vary depending on each region’s peculiarities.  Bob Wise, the president of the alliance, noted that 84 percent of high school graduates in Honolulu go on to some kind of postsecondary education, compared with 47 percent in Memphis. For the area that includes Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., for instance, the study finds that if half of the 70,929 students who dropped out of the class of 2008 had earned diplomas, they would have contributed $575 million more in wages and $79 million in property, sales, and income taxes during an average year, which the alliance defines as when a graduate is about 39 years old.

“Nearly 600,000 students dropped out of the class of 2008, at a great cost to themselves,” he said, “but as this study demonstrates, also to their communities.”

In a time when the nation is straining to pay for two wars, the health care crisis, a recession, one would think that the business community as well as the politicians would see that increasing our nation’s graduation rate would have a dramatic effect on our nation and our economy.

Manpower Magazine has released a list of the 10 hardest jobs to fill.  For the past four years the jobs are the same.  In preparing students for the world of work, educators from all levels should be aware of the gaps which exist between jobs and applicants.  The U.S. findings are part of a Manpower global study that surveyed more than 39,000 employers across 33 countries and territories in January 2009. Positions in the skilled trades, sales, technical work and engineering remain the most difficult for employers to fill globally.

The 10 Hardest Jobs to Fill, as reported by U.S. employers for 2009, are:
1. Engineers
2. Nurses
3. Skilled/Manual Trades
4. Teachers
5. Sales Representatives
6. Technicians
7. Drivers
8. IT Staff
9. Laborers
10. Machinist/Machine Operators

Educators, business people and government officials need to take action so that people are enticed to take these jobs.

Education Week reports. Hard Times Hit Schools by Michele McNeil, that “states are already racking $40 billion shortfalls so far this year (or the equivalent of the K-12 education budget of Texas.   The number keeps rising as (schools) start the 2008-2009 school year.”  In other words, when the stimulus checks stop, states and schools will need to find some way to continue to fund the programs and salaries that the Federal Government funded.

When the economy takes a hit, whether caused by high gas prices or the sub-prime mortgage crisis or the falling stock market or the phases of the moon, schools sustain the largest hit.  For example, in Hawaii, in order to make up for the shortfall in the state budget schools are being closed every other Friday and teacher furloughed.  Little or no thought was given to the impact on learning or the impact on families.  Parents now have to scramble to provide day care services or miss work.  The Law of Unintended Consequences comes into play now that the rest of the state’s economy is hit by parent workers not showing up for work.

Politicians like to speak about the critical role that schools play in building America’s role in the global economy yet education budgets are frequently sacrificed in pursuit of ‘instant fixes” in the war on declining state revenues.

The media frequently point to the growing success of the Chinese and Indian economies which have succeeded by a focused effort to improve their educational systems and increased spending of additional funds.

We cannot raise educational achievement by cutting funding.  Politicians and the media need to be reminded that while money will not solve all of education’s problems, the lack of funding will solve none of the problem.

Colleges continue to accept sub-standard students who require remediation and then complain that the K-12 system hasn’t adequately prepared them.  The college dropout rate is higher than the K-12 dropout rate and this is with students who have succeeded in the K-12 system.

Universities continue to build new buildings and add additional seats and then accept even more ill-prepared students.  They raise their tuition and fees faster than inflation thinking that parents and federal loans will cover the additional costs.

If they didn’t accept these poorly prepared students, than the students and their parents would recognized that students had to be better prepared for the post-K-12 environment or the K-12 schools would have to raise their teaching-learning requirements when giving grades.

But colleges and universities continue to build more buildings, creating more empty seats which they need to fill.  At the same time, they seek to fill these seats lowering their requirements to equal the number of available seats.

Wouldn’t it make more sense, if they were interested in producing quality students to validate the products of the k-12 system by refusing to accept  below average students.

In America, we are in the midst of our holiday eating seasons.  It starts with Thanksgiving, goes through Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanza and culminates on New Year’s.  To say that we are in the middle of an globally obesity crisis is not an understatement.  And adults are not the only ones affected.  Go into any school in the world and you will see obese children.  Researchers can find many causes such as the lack of exercise, sitting in front of television or computers.  What is happening is that there is an increase in diseases which are linked to obesity.  In the past 10 years, the number of type 2 diabetics has almost doubled.  Overall, there are an estimated 24 million people with diabetes in America.  That includes one in four who don’t even know they have the disease.

Most of us do not even think about the implications of what we do.  To burn off one plain M&M candy, a person will have to walk the full length of a football field.

Walking a mile is approximately 2,000 steps.  On average, one minute of walking will extend a person’s life by about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes.  Walking an extra 29 minutes a day will burn off 7 pounds of body fat each year.

Adults who over eat frequently are children who overate.  Teaching students good nutrition should not only take place in health classes but all over the school.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS.