36 More Small Schools Due in September

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg, along with Chancellor Klein, issued a press release announcing an expansion of the small school program next fall.

Official Press Release
For coverage in the New York Times

Discipline can only go so far. Without the drive emanating from the participant's view, our educational system will continue to be (and I hate to use a cliche in this instance, so I'll use many) "pushing a rope", "going against the grain", "swimming upstream", you name it. Without self-drive, it's almost impossible to just, in the words of Chris Rock, "get your learn on".

The LA Times has published an in-depth series called "The Vanishing Class" that explores the reasons for high drop-out in the Los Angeles Unified School district, the second largest school district in the country (I believe second only to New York). The reasons are aplenty: Economic, family circumstances, disciplinary reasons, academic difficulties, disillusionment with the educational system. But the Times took the added step of speaking to those students who had dropped out, and getting their take on the underlying causes, their current day-to-day while out of school, and their prospects for the future. Here's the introduction to the series:

"On a September day 4 1/2 years ago, nearly 1,100 ninth-graders — a little giddy, a little scared — arrived at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys. They were fifth-generation Americans and new arrivals, straight arrows and gangbangers, scholars and class clowns. On a radiant evening last June, 521 billowing figures in royal blue robes and yellow-tasseled mortarboards walked proudly across Birmingham's football field, practically floating on a carpet of whoops and shouts and blaring air horns, to accept their diplomas. It doesn't take a valedictorian to do the math: Somewhere along the way, Birmingham High lost more than half of the students who should have graduated."

Here is the article in full:
http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-dropout29jan29,0,6750397.story