by Justin Patterson

Created on: April 27, 2010   Last Updated: April 28, 2010

I saw one of the best cartoons that deals with this issue. It was clipped proudly to my debate coach's (a public teacher for 20 years) tack board. It showed two older women dressed in rock T-shirts in a parent-teacher conference and the caption reads "We blame the schools for our students failing grades even though we never helped him with his homework, we never encouraged him, and we never took an active part in his education."

This cartoon and personal experience has convinced me that parents are the ones that need to get  more involved in students lives, and not schools.  This will help decrease the high school drop-out rate epidemic . School officials are only our students caretakers for less than 8 hours, and they are not our students parents. It will not matter how good the school atmosphere is if parents do not take an active part in their students education

Drawing on from personal experience, I know how this can go. My parents failed to take an active part in my education except for the occasional look at the report card and yelling at my bad grades. This made high school extremely tough for me and I struggled at times to pass my classes and to graduate. The last class of high school, an Algebra II class, I came within a grade point of failing because my parents refused to leave me enough time to study for the class. If I had failed that class, I would have not graduated high school. A less gifted student would have mostly likely dropped out in my shoes.

I know first-hand that parents are 95% of the root cause behind low graduation rates. I received no encouragement from my parents, my parents had no regard for my study and homework schedule and they put no effort into talking to my teachers unless they called first. I believe that an education takes place at both school and at home, and if the atmosphere for learning is not good in the home it possibly can not lead to good education in the school

Also some parents need to quit persuading students that if they do not do well in high school, they can just drop out. This is probably the worst thing a parent can tell their children. It has been stated that a high school graduate will make a million dollars more than someone without a high school diploma. People who do not graduate from high school find themselves in hard labor jobs for low pay. In a world that is progressing everyday, a high school diploma is quickly becoming a requiem for finding a decent job and becoming a successful

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