Can Online Learning End America’s Dropout Crisis?
07/26/2010
Please take a moment to visit DropOutNation.net, a website launched in 2005 by journalist RiShawn Biddle. You’ll find your visit informative, troubling – but inspiring too, because Biddle is doing remarkable things to keep young Americans from dropping out of high school.
Here are just a few of the things you will learn on DropOutNation.net . . .
High school dropouts aren’t deadbeats. Many are now entrepreneurs, businesspeople and responsible parents. A lot of them dropped out because they were under-served by their schools, or because family circumstances required them to withdraw from school. And many of them are trying diligently to return to high school and then go to college.
Dropping out isn’t just an urban problem. The majority of America’s dropouts are white, and from suburbs and small towns. No matter where you live in America, the crisis is right at your door.
Young African-American men are in the heart of the crisis. It’s part of a larger trend that Biddle calls “Educational Genocide” directed against young Black men.
Families are fighting back. With American public schools underfunded and in crisis, a growing number of American families are taking the lead in speaking up to end the dropout crisis in America. Biddle’s podcast, “Rallying Single Parents, Grandparents and Immigrants for School Reform” tells the story.
Can Distance Learning Help?
DropOutNation.net documents the fact that many American dropouts are dreaming of education while working long, hard hours to support their families. It sounds like a situation where distance learning courses can help, doesn’t it?
We think so. Online learning has always worked well for motivated, overworked, busy people. People just like America’s dropouts. Who, it turns out, are a lot like everyone else.
By Barry Lenson
