marinetbryant was wondering if there may be an “inverse statistic”[al] relationship between high school drop-outs nationally and their recruitment; that means that while Army recruitment of drop-outs went up 19%, between ’03 and ’07, nationally it may have gone down 19%.

It may have gone down some, but there’s no way of objectively knowing as:

States calculate their graduation rates using all sorts of methods, many of which critics say are based on unreliable information about school dropouts. Under No Child Left Behind, states may use their own methods of calculating graduation rates and set their own goals for improving them.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5heUgDfYJ5ytrg1mE6JqQIiCiBXOgD8VOS5RG0

Yet most certainly it didn’t go down 19% in five years. We should assume if there was a decline in graduates nationally, then it was modest.

Therefore, what accounts for the decrease in high school graduate recruitment:

The war:

[In 2005] Army Secretary Noel Harvey and vice chief of staff Gen. Richard Cody said Monday that the Army was using looser Defense Department rules that permitted it to sign up more high school dropouts and people who score lower on mental-qualification tests, but they denied that this meant it was lowering standards.

Until Army recruiters began having trouble signing up enough recruits earlier this year, the Army had set minimum standards that were higher than those of the Defense Department.
…

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1004-01.htm

Of course, more incentives for enlistments solved much of the Army’s concerns, as in the past two years there have no goal enlistment shortfalls.

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MarineBryant is correct that the increase in recruits who have not been graduated may be directly related to national statistics that are increasing for drop outs. In fact, just in the last couple weeks, I heard a talking head report on the worrisome increasing HS drop out rates. Quite timely, when you think of the increased recruitment of those without HS diplomas.

This NEA study for 2008 uses data from 2003-04. Amazing how slow and behind the times our educators are. Takes ‘em this long to analyze?? Geez

Cities in Crisis uses a new measure of graduation and applies it to the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data, limiting the analysis to school districts in the nation’s 50 largest cities. The findings are not unexpected – using their measure, the author finds that graduation rates are exceedingly low. Graduation rates range from a high of 77.1 percent in Mesa, Arizona, to a low of 24.9 percent in Detroit, Michigan. Overall, the average graduation rate for these districts is 51.8 percent.

This NCES study using the period from 1999 to 2003 breaks it down via race/ethnicity.

In 2003, this measure was 15 percent for American Indians/Alaska Natives, higher than the 6 percent for Whites and 4 percent for Asian/Pacific Islanders. Although the estimate for American Indians/Alaska Natives appears to be higher than the rate for Blacks, the difference is not significant due to the large standard error for American Indians/Alaska Natives. However, American Indian/Alaska Native youth and young adults were less likely to have dropped out than Hispanics (15 percent vs. 24 percent). Between 1990 and 2003, the estimates for American Indians/Alaska Natives have fluctuated, showing no consistent trend.

According to this March 06 study from Silent Epidemic:/

Top Five Reasons Dropouts Identify as Major Factors For Leaving School

1: Classes were not interesting – 47%
2: Missed too many days and could not catch up – 43%
3: Spent time with peoplewho were not interested in school – 42%
4: Had too much freedom and not enough rules in my life – 38%
5: Was failing in school – 35%

Weird that the top 5 reason percentages add up to more than 100%… must be the new math. LOL Hey… just cutting and pastin’ here. Go now how they come to these figures.

Every study seems to give different results. But most say this is a problem on the increase. Considering public education nowadays, who came blame ‘em for not finding it interesting! Milquetoast revisionism that does nothing to encourage an ambitious self-starter.

The high degree of drop outs disinterested in learning, or that played hookey so often they were behind the eight ball, sound like candidates who would benefit greatly from military discipline. And they would end up with a GED – not in jail.

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I would venture a wild guess that if one researched the total drop-out rate from 2003 to 2007 one might find an inverse statistic (?).

Tom

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The NYT piece reminded me of this Salon piece:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/02/02/waivers/print.html

I tend to think not much has changed in the two years when you contrast the NYT piece and the Salon piece.

The Army is still in a very tight fix.

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Agreed. “Hard core guys with hard core records definitely need to be dumped.”

But while we are not recruiting from the bottom of the barrel, when the proportion of new army recruits with high school diplomas drops from over 90% in 2003 to 71% in 2007 — the lowest levels in at least 25 years– and then stuff like this happens:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_D._Green

perhaps it’s worth “a whole article.”

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