Dwyer, L. (2011, February). Laura Bush thinks “Middle School Matters” and she’s right. Good is. Retrived March 1, 2011, from http://www.good.is/post/laura-bush-thinks-middle-school-matters-and-she-s-right/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+good%2Flbvp+%28GOOD+Main+RSS+Feed%29.
Laura Bush has a new plan for education. She wishes to lower the dropout rate of high school students by identifying the students who are most likely to dropout, those that are scoring below average on reading and math. These are the students that would be given additional help in and out of the classroom when necessary. The goal is to help these students before they reach the high school. Mrs. Bush would like to her program to be set-up in at least 20 schools in the next couple of years.
I found that this article really indentified one of the problems in education. Students seem to only get the help they need once they have scored badly on a test. Why cannot the students be helped before they begin to fail in areas? Educators should be identifying these problem students even by the time they enter sixth grade. Junior high students may need the help just as much as high school students and this early intervention may prevent more students from not dropping out of high school. I know that President Obama has also called for more focus to be placed on math which Mrs. Bush’s team stated as one of the weakness for dropout students. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this new Middle School Matters program. With the lag time between the implication of the program and the down time, I believe that more intervention should be given to the students who are showing signs of dropping out of school, becoming home schooled, or are currently struggling in math and reading. The schools should be providing as many resources as they can for these students.
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