Another interesting report just came out on the causes of students dropping out of high school.

McREL Blog has a good summary and commentary on it in the post Addressing High School Dropout: Taking a Look Inward. In it, a lot of people are blaming someone else for the problem — except for one group.

I’d encourage you to read the entire post. Here’s a quote:

“Here’s what’s interesting, though—according to the “ Silent Epidemic” report, most students (70%) do actually blame themselves, saying they could graduate if they had tried harder. Further, the report informs us that “while most dropouts blame themselves for failing to graduate, there are things they say schools can do to help them finish.”

Thus, it appears that everyone else seems to be blaming someone else, except the kids who drop out. What should that tell us?

Our dropout crisis will persist until each of us takes a look at those fingers pointing back at us, and identify our own culpability in our nation’s dropout crisis.

Change will require us to be introspective and acknowledge our own shortcomings. Once we do that, then we might be able to collaborate to present viable solutions to address high school dropout.”