High school drop-out rate

[shootingstar]

Haven't searched around how Canada compares. But I know here in Alberta (that's where I am right now), they recently raised the minimum age for high school drop-outs to 17 yrs. (from 16 yrs.), because they want a mechanism to keep students in school.

For the U.S.:

"[T]he U.S. is the only industrialized country in which young people are less likely than their parents to graduate from high school" (The New York Times, May 26, 2009, p.A19). "The U.S., which long enjoyed the world's top high school graduation rate, has fallen to 13th place behind such countries as South Korea, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia" (The Week, Nov. 14, 2008, p.20). In a study of "applied learning and problem-solving skills of 15-year-olds in 30 industrialized countries, the U.S. ranked 25th out of the 30 in math and 24th in science" (The New York Times, April 22, 2009, p.A27). Furthermore, "30 million Americans have 'below basic' literacy skills" (The Week, April 9, p.5). "[S]tate dropout rates are highest in the South, where Georgia (22.1 percent), Florida (20.1 percent), Texas (18.5 percent) and North Carolina (17.6 percent) lead the way" (The New York Times, May 9, 2009, p.A18).
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrob...=oid%3A1101408

I realize education isn't everything nor helps a person from doing stupid things in life, but alot of jobs and to even marginally assess validity of info. (now that we have the glut on the Internet), it helps to have mastered some basic skills.

[malkin]

We're dreaming if we expect all these kids to support our old age with their Social Security contributions.

[Crankin]

HS graduation rates vary widely from school district to school district in the US. We have no national curriculum and funding is extremely different from town to town. Plus, in other countries, particularly in the EU, students are tracked at a young age. Some do a technical track and graduate at 15 or 16, while others pass a college entrance exam and do 2 years of college prep work before matriculating at a university. Here, we don't have that choice, although there are technical high schools. But even then, you are in school until 17 or 18.
The best example I can give is that the HS I taught at in AZ had a 12% drop out rate. It was high for my district, but we had a lot of non-English speaking kids who didn't get the services they needed. And this was a really good school district . The HS my kids went to had about a half a percent drop out rate, as does the school where I live now. The high school in the city where I am doing my counseling internship has a 50% drop out rate. It all has to do with poverty and funding.