Ed Bove-Beacon Blog

Murphy's Law Strikes Again!

I've been attending a great conference in Kansas City the past few days.  Fantastic information.  Great exchange of ideas.  I can't wait to get home and implement some of the terrific new concepts I picked up.

Anxious to get home, I thought about moving up my afternoon flight to an earlier one.  Ultimately, I decided not to; I didn't think it was worth the additional $150 the airline was going to charge me just to get home a few hours earlier.

BIG MISTAKE!

My flight, which was scheduled to leave at 3:11 p.m. Central Time has been twice delayed.  Now I won't get in the air until 7:30.  That means I won't get home 'til around midnight.  And that's assuming there are no further delays!!!  Lesson I learned: Always follow my first instinct.  It's usually the right one.

Why the delay?  Well, I'll tell you:  It has been pouring rain nearly the entire time I've been here in KC. Today is the first day I've seen anything resembling sunshine.  Ironically, it seems that same storm system has moved east and is causing big delays at Newark Airport.  Some days you just can't win.

You know we're in trouble when...

I was taking a break while attending a conference in Kansas City and decided to take a look at the complimentary USA Today that was left outside the door of my hotel room this morning.  It didn't take long before I was reaching for some Pepcid!

That's because of a small blurb I spotted on page 3:

Report flags U.S. dropout problem

    One in four students drop out of high school, a rate that hasn't budged for at least five years, according to a study released by a children's advocacy group.  More than half the states have graduation goals that don't make schools get better, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, the Education Trust said in the report.

    "The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," report author Anna Habash said.  Education Trust advocates on behalf of minority and poor children.

I don't know what's more disturbing: The fact that 25% of our kids can't make it through high school, or that this is only a small blurb inside the paper.  Shouldn't this be a major Page 1 story?  Think about it.  Our children are our future.  If one-quarter of them don't even make it out of high school, I don't think the future is very bright.

If this story is accurate, we've got a major problem with education in this country.  We've got to take some drastic action to change this cycle of failure or we're in big trouble.  And I don't mean having politicians throw boatloads of money at it.  New school buildings don't translate into better learning.  We, as a society, need to do everything we can to change the current educational culture.  A culture in which a 25% dropout rate is acceptable and only warrants a Page 3 blurb.