Tuesday, September 25, 2012

EDUCATION - The Underperforming, Fallen Behind, or Failing Students

"Why Students Who Underperform, Fall Behind or Fail Classes Drop Out of School" PBS Newshour 9/24/2012

Excerpt

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): In addition to those who leave school without a diploma, there are millions more who are underperformers, failing classes, and falling behind.

What happens when students drop out?

Are American schools any good at providing a flexible path to graduation for those who have already checked out? Are schools doing enough to grab kids with potential before failure and negative reinforcement leads them to drop out?

My guests' lives and work makes them unusually qualified to tackle those questions.

Stephanie Krauss is a former dropout who runs the Shearwater Education Foundation in Saint Louis, which operates a charter high school for high-risk students.

Adam Steltzner is a NASA engineer we profiled earlier this year. He helped design the landing for the Curiosity mission to Mars, but once came close to dropping out of high school himself.

And we also profiled Professor Victor Rios, a former gang member and high school dropout who now studies young men like himself. He teaches sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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