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Education Reform -- Gateway to College launches in Philadelphia

By 3L at Seton Hall University School of Law and Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

In the first of a three-part series, the Philadelphia Inquirer explores the problem of high school dropouts in the City of Brotherly Love. A recent study showed that roughly 50% of public-school ninth graders actually graduate high school in four years; more than eight thousand drop out every year in Philadelphia.

The program, "Gateway to College," provides scholarships to high school dropouts, enabling them to earn a high school diploma & college credits at the same time. The Gateway program is funded largely by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and will soon operate out of twenty colleges around the country. The program costs slightly more than $3,000 per student; roughly 70% of the program participants will drop out before they achieve a diploma via this alternate route.

While the program is certainly laudable, any success with this pilot class may be impossible to replicate on a larger scale because of self-selection. The pilot class of 40 student had the initiative to participate in this program and were selected from more than 700 applicants--more than 300 of which were tested and interviewed as part of the selection process. Obviously, the pilot class includes students that were (1) motivated enough to apply and (2) possessed certain qualities that enabled them to "succeed despite past academic failures." It would seem that the more critical efforts should be targeted at students so frustrated with public education that they drop out. This certainly does not mean that programs targeted to improving the lot of "highly motivated students who dropped out of public education should be terminated; rather, it recognizes the heterogeneity of the needs of students who drop out.

Dropouts: By the Numbers
- Every nine seconds of every school day, on average, a student becomes a dropout.
- Three-quarters of state prison inmates and 59 percent of federal inmates are high school dropouts. Dropouts are 31/2 times more likely to be incarcerated than high school graduates, studies show.
- Every 600,000 who drop out in any given year cost public health-insurance programs $23 billion.
- Crime-related costs would drop $1.4 billion if 1 percent of male dropouts ages 20 to 60 finished high school.
- Federal investment in second-chance education and training programs have fallen from $15 billion in the late 1970s to $3 billion today, adjusted for inflation.

Full post as published by Urban Law Journal on June 01, 2008 (boomark / email).