Dropout Prevention Leadership Summit targets education crisis

By Zaina Adamu Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) teamed up with Americas Promise Alliance to present Brighter Futures: Marylands Dropout Prevention Leadership Summit at Randallstown High School, June 22, 2009. The conference featured national experts who spoke to nearly 600 educators and community leaders on the statewide dropout epidemic. The goals behind the summit included increasing awareness of dropout rates in order to prevent the millions of students who drop out of school annually. High school dropouts are three-anda-half percent more likely than high school graduates to be arrested in their lifetime, said member of Congress Elijah Cummings. Seventy-five percent of the inmates in the Maryland Department of Corrections surveyed do not have a high school diploma. The summits goal was to solve problems surrounding dropout rates. In an attempt to uncover the mystery behind the increasing education crisis, students who recently dropped out spoke about the reasons they left school. I wasnt motivated to stay in school. I didnt think I could learn anything I could use in the real world, said one high school teenager who left school one year ago. In 2009, MSDE created strategies to decrease, if not eliminate, dropout rates. Marylands Master Plan Updates is a statewide system placed in schools, which monitors performance, finances and extracurricular activities associated with each school. The data is then analyzed to meet the specific needs of each school district to either rectify or enhance problems affiliated with each school. Within the last 10 years, non-fictional and informational literature has targeted the problem. Specifically, Jay Sminks Addressing the Dropout Crisis aims to identify education setbacks by reaching out to the public. Dropout prevention is everybodys responsibility. We know a lot about the school dropout issue we also know what to do to reduce the dropout rate, Smink states in his book. By the 2010-2011 school year, each school system in Maryland will be required to develop a school dropout prevention plan to lessen dropout rates.

Current high school students enact some of the problems that dropout students encounter in the Randallstown High School auditorium during the Dropout Prevention Leadership Summit on June 22, 2009 Photo by Zaina Adamu In 2008, 4.44 percent of AfricanState and founder of Americas Promise American students dropped out of Mary- Alliance Colin Powell. land schools compared to only 2.58 percent from the white populations. Although the rates among black students In Debt Over Your Head? declined by .85 percent since 2006, the numbers of children dropping out are still in millions. When more than one million students are dropping out of school, it is more than a problem, it is a catastrophe, said former Secretary of

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The Baltimore Times, July 17 - 23, 2009 (www.baltimoretimesonline.com)