Teaching Strategies That Work - Can They Lower High School Drop Out Rates?

ST. LOUIS, March 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a study from the Alliance for Excellent Education, close to 7000 students are dropping out of school each day, with a predicted 12 million more students dropping out in the next decade.¹

Cathy Viney, Executive Director and teaching strategies expert of the non-profit Applied Scholastics International, www.appliedscholastics.org warns, "This means that approximately 1.2 million students per year will not graduate from high school. Without a diploma, these high school dropouts will be more apt to experience a lower wage, intermittent unemployment, government assistance, or even worse, incarceration in our already overcrowded prison system in contrast to those students who have graduated from high school."

The 2012 High School Dropouts in America Survey² found that parents were the greatest cause of high school dropouts. While 23 percent of dropouts identified the lack of parental support for the reason they dropped out, even more significantly, 15 percent of students dropped out due to failing classes and an additional 15 percent dropped out due to uninteresting classes.

Without question parental support is vital to a student's success and there may be a variety of complex reasons why a parent was unable to better support the child in their education. However, could 30% of those drop outs due to "failing classes" and "uninteresting classes" be retained with teaching strategies that identify early warning signs of failure or disinterest and recognize the extra effort needed to keep these students on track for graduation.

What if teaching strategies were employed that helped schools know how to grow student engagement, which ultimately drives everything related to school success? What is being done now is not working to identify students at risk of dropping out. We need a new model of teaching strategies that engage the student and keep him/her engaged.

Viney says, "Our Teaching Strategies That Work: How To Keep Students Engaged and Winning Program based on the educational works of L. Ron Hubbard helps schools, teachers and parents give their at-risk students a voice by tapping into the reasons 'why' a student becomes disengaged and provides interventions to support teachers, parents and students to reengage or increase engagement so as to achieve educational success."

The late, great Professor Donald H. Graves, bestselling author of The Energy To Teach said, "Teaching is choosing the right skills based on an astute observation of the child's needs. Good teachers know the interests and passions of their students and know how to put good books in their hands."

A Free guide to the benefits of Applied Scholastics teaching strategies is available at www.appliedscholastics.org or call Toll free: 877-75-LEARN.

For media inquiries, contact Cathy Viney at (314) 344-6355 Ext 2100.

About Applied Scholastics International

The nonprofit Applied Scholastics International is a trusted authority on the subject of teaching strategies and learning styles and provides timely and useful information so as to improve the lives of all students affected by learning difficulties and the social, economic and emotional issues associated with these difficulties. For more information, go to www.appliedscholastics.org.

Contact: Cathy Viney
(314) 344-6355 Ext 2100   
[email protected]

SOURCE Applied Scholastics International