On average, 25% of US students drop out of high school.
I have little tolerance for “being average”, mostly because little changes have a way of propelling you well above average.
It isn’t that average is bad, but remember that average is like scoring 50th percentile on a test – half of the people are below average.
On any one test, maybe that’s not a big deal – unless the test is your life and business.
It’s “just how it is”
While the overall U.S. dropout rate is 25%, 50% of American Indian students drop out.
Regardless of lineage, some say that’s just how it is because “most dropouts are disconnected and unmotivated”, or they’re “intellectually under-performing” – meaning they’d never be able to graduate because they aren’t smart enough to complete the work required to graduate.
Whether those things are true or not, it doesn’t seem ideal for a community’s future to have 25% of students stumble out of school with little or no life, work or business skills any more than than it would to return to the days when two million kids aged seven to 12 worked 70 hour weeks in factories and coal mines. Never mind that it took Congress over 100 years to outlaw child labor, and even then, did so only to allow depression-era adults to get work.
Some of the 25% will struggle, suffer and become the people we look away from, some will manage thanks to skills gained from their family, and some will figure it out.
What can we do?
So what can a community do to improve the chances of a good outcome?
I wonder if some life skills (like budgeting and goal setting), some technical skills (like welding, heavy equipment operation or diesel repair) and/or some business skills (such how to plan and start a new business on a shoestring budget) might give these kids the foundation they need to become “a normal part of society” (you can decide what that means).
For this, we may need to know about the portion of the 25% who got past their slow start.
It’s likely that there’s research showing what improves the likelihood of helping these kids get started on the road to a successful life where they can find rewarding work, save some money for a rainy day, have a family if they wish and prepare themselves financially for old age. We may need to know the turning points that kept them out of prison, “soup kitchens” and shelters.
25 percent is acceptable
25% may seem pretty bad, yet as our day goes on, many of us manage to accept it. Either we think we can’t do anything about it, or we’re doing all we can just to keep our own stuff together.
Here’s how 25% feels in other parts of our lives:
- Three eggs of every dozen would be rotten.
- Three beers in every twelve pack are flat.
- When you put a dollar into a change machine, you always get three quarters back.
- One tire on your car is always flat.
- Two pieces of every pizza have no sauce, cheese or toppings.
- 7500 U.S. commercial flights crash every day.
If these things happened daily, there would be plenty of uproar, Congressional hearings and so on.
Yet one in four dropping out is what we seem to accept as a society, as long as our kid or adorable little grandchild isn’t dropping out – kind of like how 25% of Veterans living on the street is somehow OK (?), as long as it isn’t our family’s Veteran.
Look, I’m not saying big brother should swoop in and (s)mother these kids. What I’m saying is that we should recognize and attempt to improve how we address the real and societal costs that result from dropping out and as a result, how these kids deal with the life they’ve chosen, the life they appear to have chosen, and/or the hand they’ve been dealt.
The exception cases, like the 1.2% of dropouts who start multi-million dollar companies, shouldn’t be an escape clause. It should instead suggest how we identify patterns of success. What was different about those dropouts and could that affect more of them?
What does this have to do with business?
These people are potential customers, potential employees and/or their family members. They’re part of the community where you and your staff work, play and live. Isn’t that enough to make it matter?
Want to learn more about Mark or ask him to write about a strategic, operations or marketing problem? See Mark’s site, contact him on Twitter, or email him at [email protected].