Yesterday I told you about “The Hunt: 11 Days Of Doing” from DoSomething.org, the nation’s largest organization for teens and social change, in partnership with Lenovo, the world’s second-largest PC maker who helped found the campaign last year, and Bing, the search engine from Microsoft. You can check in each day here for the list of challenges, which are released at 11:11 AM EST on the web, through email, and text until the close of the campaign on July 20. Each challenge takes less than an hour to complete. Feel free to join in. It’s not too late!
DAY 9: EDUCATION
CHALLENGES:
Challenge 1: Search for “NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL DROP OUT RATES” on Bing to find a stat about how many people are leaving school. Raise awareness by sharing the stat to your social networks.
Challenge 2: Collect school supplies to donate to your local Staples store. (Keep in mind, the supplies don’t have to brand spankin’ new, but try not donate anything you wouldn’t use.)
ULTRA bonus: Teach a senior citizen how to set up and use an email account.
Today’s challenges are all about education, which is a subject very dear to my heart since I am an elementary school librarian. I’ve seen students I’ve worked with when they were in kindergarten graduate from high school, and I have to tell you that there is a great feeling in knowing that they succeeded and that I had the opportunity to work alongside them in their educational journey.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, using a study by the U. S. Department of Education (2012), the national high school dropout rate for the United States in 2010 was 7.4%. Fortunately, this number is on the decline since 1990 when the dropout rate was 12%, but it’s still disheartening. Now that I am aware of this, I’ll still continue to encourage my students to aim for graduating high school. For me, it was one of the proudest moments of my life and every student deserves that chance.
Now that you know the national dropout rate for high school students according to this study, does this number surprise you?
I am participating in a paid campaign through Mom Bloggers For Social Good. All opinions are my own.
Honestly I thought it would be higher. It’s wonderful that the rate has gone down but it’s a shame that it’s such a struggle to come up with a system to help more kids graduate. I know there are a lot of variables involved in each story which makes it harder.
I can’t say it’s a surprise exactly, because unfortunately, I could understand how there is still a long way to go in helping to improve these statistics. What a great challenge, though. I hadn’t heard about the DoSomething program; thanks for sharing!
I had no idea the number was so bad 🙁 How sad.
I really love these challenges!
It is a sad number, but I really thought it’d be higher. (I am glad it’s not!)
It’s sad. I can see why kids would drop out though, I know alot are probably bored or they have just given up. It’s pretty sad.
I think that’s a huge cause where I live. Poverty also plays a huge role in things here. It’s frustrating because we are such a developed country. It seems like these issues shouldn’t even be issues anymore, but they are.