Across America schools are fighting with high school drop out rates, currently only about 70 percent of entering high school freshmen go on to graduate. Last November 14th, 2009 Oakland held a summit about high school drop out prevention. At Castlemont Community Small Schools Oakland Mayor Dellums, OUSD Superintendent Tony Smith, Oakland Education Association, and other community leaders discussed the future of Oakland education. Student speakers will share their own stories about dropping out and recommitting to school. Now about four months later, Obama has also recognized this horrible trend as well, and proposed $900 million to states and education districted that agree to change their worst performing schools.  

This $900 million will be apart of 2011’s budget, but to get some of the cash school will have to adopt one of these four approaches to changing or fixing their schools:

Turnaround Model: The school district must replace the principal and at least half of the school staff, adopt a new governance structure for the school, and implement a new or revised instructional program.
Restart Model: The school district must close and reopen the school under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization. A restarted school would be required to enroll, within the grades it serves, former students who wish to attend.
School Closure: The school district must close the failing school and enroll the students in other, higher-achieving schools in the district.
Transformational Model: The school must address four areas, including teacher effectiveness, instruction, learning and teacher planning time, and operational flexibility.
The administration also is putting $50 million into dropout prevention strategies (Via: New York Times)

This seems like a movement in the right direction. There are always claims that the government doesn’t care about education but this puts that at a halt. There will continue to be questions about which schools qualify and which don’t, the follow through with school and if Obama’s proposal will come to fruition. However, knowing that the President and government is concerned should inspire some students to make it though the four years to graduation.
 

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