Negative Essay: Why High School Students Dropout

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Why High School Students Dropout Its graduation night and the moths nipping at the street lights aren’t the only active flying insects. Inside a sprawling auditorium, filled to rafters with family, friends, and faculty the butterflies have taken up residence in the future graduates stomachs. There is an overwhelming feeling of pride, happiness, and accomplishment in the air. Camera flashes shimmer like distant stars across the crowd as spectators reserve memories for later recollection. Satin caps and gowns shine bright under the venue’s lights and the bearers of those gowns have the most ecstatic of faces. Another school year has come to a close and it is now time to bestow a certificate of completion to the anxious graduating class. This …show more content…

In almost half of the states, including Idaho, Nevada, Nebraska, South Dakota and Utah, the definition of excused absences is not broad enough to include pregnant and parenting students (Kenney). That fact typically means schools are allowed come up with muddled policies that are vague and often chastise the student because the absences aren’t excused, even in the event of child birth. It doesn’t take a mechanical engineer to compute the outcome for the pregnant students faced with these situations. They are essentially fighting an uphill battle in this scenario that sadly, plays out in high school halls across the nation. Students that attend high school work for various reasons, to get a car, to purchase that new album on iTunes, or to have money to hang out with friends. While most high school students can balance school and work effectively and still succeed on both fronts, sadly, students are dropping out of school to work so they can make money to help their families in astounding numbers. Using data from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey, researchers at the Urban Institute found that nearly a third of the 563,000 teenage dropouts left school for work (Douglas-Gabriel p.

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