Student and Parent Comments
Karen Mercier, Alumni Parent
Speech for Governor's Summit April 10, 2009
Karen Mercier, Alumni Parent
We are a society that loves to measure everything. We hear the statement "roughly one-third of our young people fail to graduate from high school..." and a little pie chart pops into our minds and we conceptualize what that means. But it's just a number, it has no face.
It has no face until the day that one's own child becomes a dropout statistic. On that day there is no little pie chart in your mind, because in your world the dropout rate just hit 100%... and that number has a face.
I'm here to tell you about two young people from the northernmost part of this state. Two kids who dropped out and then found their way back to graduation by an unconventional path. They came from different backgrounds; they faced different personal challenges, but they were both rescued by an educational model that was innovative and flexible enough to accommodate their individual needs.
Here is their story:
My son, James, had been homeschooled since he was eleven years old. Musically gifted, he was having a great time performing with music ensembles all over New England and Quebec. He spent part of one summer performing in Europe. I wasn't sure how he was going to continue his education in a more formal way, but I wasn't too worried about it. Looking back, I certainly should have been. When he was 17, a run in with the police left him disillusioned, cynical, and mistrustful of authority. The following year, his favorite music ensemble disbanded, all the musicians were heading for college....all of them, that is, except for James. He started working toward his GED, but he lost interest and never finished. He knew that a GED wouldn't get him into college anyway. At nineteen, he was working part-time, playing computer games in his bedroom, and not much else. I was afraid for him. In the summer of 2004, I saw a press release in the Coos County Democrat about a charter high school opening up in our area. That fall James entered a classroom for the first time in eight years. And it was there that he met Carol.
Carol had always dreamed of going on to college. But by the summer of 2004 it looked like her college dreams were over. At 17, Carol was an unmarried mother and a high school drop out. Statistics relating to teen mothers are grim; less than half of them ever finish high school, leaving them and their children pretty much predestined to a generational cycle of poverty and under-achievement. For Carol, enrolling in the charter school was the easy part; in order to stay in school Carol and her infant daughter needed a network of services. They needed a safe place to live; they needed help with food, transportation, and day care. Support came from local churches and charities, state and county resources, and some very special people at the North County Charter Academy and North Country Educational Services. Without this safety net, Carol would not have made it to graduation.
Both Carol and James took advantage of an educational model that allowed them to work as rapidly as possible toward graduation. Carol only needed to earn a few more credits for her diploma. James, of course, had no credits at all, but a comprehensive academic assessment showed that he, too, was close to fulfilling high school graduation requirements. Their learning plans were individualized and allowed them to go at their own pace. Throughout that winter and into the spring of 2005 I could see that the structure and discipline of the classroom was really good for James, and that once again he was making plans for his future. During that time I watched Carol grow into a poised and self-confident young woman who had gotten her dreams back. I could also see that James's plans and Carol's dreams were going to include each other.
Today, nearly four years later, Carol, James and 5 year old Alexis are very much a family. Carol is completing her junior year at Becker College in Worcester, MA. She's an honor student on full academic scholarship. Her freshman year she was hired by her college as a peer tutor. Last year she was promoted to head of the tutoring program. During her summers she works as an assistant to the Dean of Libraries. Today, at this very moment, Carol is practice teaching sixth grade. She is an Education major. She once told me that no one had had a more positive or a more profound influence on her life than her teachers.
During the school year, James rides the train from Worcester to Harvard Square in Cambridge where he's completing his third year at Longy School of Music. It's unusual for a self taught musician to make it in a conservatory program and he has to work very hard. But he has learned that hard work pays off. He, too, is an honor student with merit scholarships. Last year he represented Longy in an ensemble performing for the Music Conservatory Accreditation committee. During the summer, James teaches saxophone and clarinet to high school students. Although performance will always be his first love, he has a natural ability to teach and his professors are encouraging him to use it. Right now James is exploring the advantages of transferring to Clark or Holy Cross College to broaden his degree and career prospects.
Little Alexis is thriving. She's in Head Start, and her parents have enrolled her in kindergarten for the fall. She's a great favorite with Carol's professors, and, at age 5, she knows the Cambridge classical music scene better than most grown-ups. She loves to be read to, she knows how to write her name, she knows all her letters. What she doesn't know is how hard Carol and James are working to give her a happy and secure childhood. She takes that for granted, as she should.
Carol and James, however, do not take it for granted. They know that there are many months of hard work ahead of them as they juggle school, work, and family responsibilities. But they also know that the opportunities they enjoy today would not be there without the high school diplomas presented to them on a warm June evening almost four years ago.
According to An Overview of Alternative Education published by the Urban Institute in 2006, there are as many as 3.5 million young people in this nation who should be in school, but are not, don't have either a high school diploma or GED, and are unemployed. It is estimated that there are no more than 200,000 slots in alternative programs to help them. Carol and James were lucky; the North Country Charter Academy was there for them when they really needed it. Without that alternative path, Carol and James would have been just a couple more public education casualties; just two out of 3.5 million. Numbers without faces.
Do we have the will to re-engage more young people like Carol and James? Can we afford not to? How do we measure their potential, their worth? I passionately hope that we can continue to develop and fund alternative pathways to graduation. I happen to know a couple of teachers-in-training who would love to return to their native New Hampshire and help us offer to others what was offered to them; a real choice, another way, and that rarest of commodities, a second chance.
Thank you.