Dropping Out Of High School By Jeremy Burrus: Article Analysis

Drop Out Cesar is a student at Hacienda Middle School in the Los Angeles School District. He lives with his mother and little brother in a small garage that was divided into sleeping spaces and a makeshift kitchen. His mother only speaks Spanish and works long hours at a minimum wage job. During Cesar’s sixth and seventh grade years of middle school the school noticed his grades starting to drop. This was a result of Cesar coming home after school and immediately helping his uncle work at a dry cleaners so he could help pay for things to help his mother around the house. After a year, Cesar was failing every class he was in. When this was noticed by the administration they considered him a liability and offered him an “opportunity transfer”. This would allow him to attend a different school, however no effort was made that this happened and Cesar never even got the chance to attend high school (Rumberger).
Cesar is one of 607,789 students that have either dropped out or never even attended high school. According to education week, an even higher number of students fail to graduate. An estimated 1.3 million students from the class of 2010 failed to graduate. This means that the nation is losing more …show more content…
Burrus goes on to state the consequences of dropping out of high school and the negative effects it can have on your life. For example, from a financial standpoint, high school dropouts make an average $375,000 less than someone who graduated high school. With these staggering numbers this also has an effect on society. For example, 40% of 16-24 year old dropouts received government assistance. So with this obvious problem, “What can be done to solve this problem?” there are a couple of ways to achieve this: Firstly, the teachers and parents should partner together to help the student achieve the greatest success. Secondly, look for key indicators of a possible