Guest Author
It’s winter break for school districts and students are doubtless enjoying a respite from homework, group projects, pop quizzes and high-stakes tests.
Yet it’s also the time where educators begin to see the slow drift of those students struggling to find their place academically and socially.
These “social misfits” or “academic malcontents” have not found their place within a school’s social milieu, i.e., jocks, science geeks, arty or gothic set. Nor have many found that special teacher or subject that takes hold of their imagination.
Which brings us to one of the state’s most urgent problems — that is, truancy and its effect on our economy. As of last year, 38 of Florida’s school districts had truancy rates higher or equal to the state’s average rate of absent days. Moreover, the state’s graduation rate of 74.5 percent is below the national rate of 78.2.
If the state wants to provide a quality education for its K-12 students, it must address truancy.
The psychological anguish that drives the “social misfit” or student languishing academically toward “school disengagement” is a major concern for more than guidance counselors or school psychologists. It is everyone’s problem: school boards, administrators, parents, and communities.
According to Gallop’s 2013 “Report on School Disengagement,” which surveyed 500,000 students, 8 through 12 grade in 1,200 schools across 37 states, only 6 in 10 middle school students and 4 in 10 high school students, are “engaged” in school life in any meaningful way.
What the Gallop Report measured is student notions of “hope, engagement, and well-being.” Successful engagement accounts for one-third of the factors that produce student success.
Engaged students avoid the “school cliff” — that is, eventual drop-out, and a hard life. According to studies, unemployment is 20 percent higher for dropouts throughout a lifetime.
Student disengagement affects one class disproportionately: A study of nine high schools determined that the 30.5 percent of students who were disengaged were living in poverty and 28 percent in urban areas.
Aside from class, it’s cultural, too.
The National Research Council, which wrote the standard reference report on the issue, conducted a 2003 survey of 2,000 students and found the competition for their attention was fierce: 40 percent of students worked an average of three hours on a school day, or spent two hours a day with friends, or watched three hours of television daily.
Surely, then, this must account for the astonishing fact that 40-to-60 percent of high school students are deemed “chronically disengaged” from school.
Alas, whatever is leading to the demoralization of students — pressed teachers, a challenging school environment, or as experts have suggested, an absence of “a sense of competence, control, and belonging” among disengaged students – it’s become a devastating educational problem.
This is why the Florida Network has, as the experts suggest, used our 31 crisis and community-based agencies to fill the gap between home and school.
Lastly, if Florida wants to improve its educational performance, the state’s leaders must put “student disengagement” high on their agenda.
