Improving student achievement: comprehensive services
by David Safier
Education Week (subscription only) has an article about the Say Yes to Education initiative in New York state. The way it's being implemented in Syracuse, NY, goes beyond tutoring and guaranteed college tuition to offer a wide array of services and programs designed to alleviate many of the hurdles poverty puts in front of children. Before looking at the program, let's look at some results since the program began in 2008.
Since the initiative began in the 2008-09 school year, the 9th grade dropout rate has fallen by nearly half, to 281 students; high school graduation rates have risen 10 percent, to 55 percent in 2011; and college certification and degree earning grew by a third, from 451 students to 579 in 2012.
Juvenile crime rates have fallen as well, from 580 arrests per year to 398. None of these results are spectacular — these kids won't enter college and adulthood with the same skills set as kids from higher income areas — but the results are more significant than what you see with most programs. Of course, it's not cheap. But then again, the Bill Gates Foundation spent more than $150 million to get Common Core up and running, with the idea that if we tell kids we want them to learn more, they will. Gates can see problems like malaria in third world countries, but the successful American businessman doesn't want to admit our economic system, which fits him like a pair of $10,000 leather gloves, grinds others down and dumps innocent children into a nearly inescapable cycle of poverty. That money could be far better spent by putting kids into the mental and physical condition they need to succeed in school. Hell, with the Gates Foundation's enormous endowment, it doesn't have to choose. It could fund both programs without breaking a sweat.