PSU Magazine Fall 2003

andy lives in an old trailer behind his employer's house. He heats the trailer and cooks his meals with the same propane stove. He's been in jail. He lost custody of his child to his drug-addicted ex-wife. He's barely scraping by. Doug is a successful computer programmer-so suc– cessful that his company can't do without him. He's taken college courses and lives in an upscale condominium in Portland's West Hills. He has a good marriage and wants to leave a legacy of success for his young son. Such different lives, and yet Randy and Doug share a significant life experience. They both dropped out of high school. Randy and Doug (both pseudonyms) are two out of 1,000 Portland-area residents 18 to 44 years old without high school diplomas who are being tracked by PSU researchers in a unique, multi-year study to find out what happens to people after they drop out. Primarily, it seeks to find out whether students who do not finish high school continue learning as adults outside school. A major part of that assessment is to understand how people con– tinue to develop literacy skills outside the public school system-a system that most of the test subjects have rejected. The project, which began in 1998 and will end in 2005, is one of two directed by Steve Reder, chair of PSU's Applied Linguistics Department, that collectively have brought nearly $5.5 million in federal funding to PSU. The other project seeks to show how adults learn English as a second language, and is run in a state-of-the-art research center-the only one of its kind in the nation. The dropout study so far has shaken some stereotypes about people who leave school while their peers continue on for anywhere from one to 10 more years. "The stereotypes are that they didn't have the skills, or they're not motivated, or they got pregnant. But we're finding a much richer set of reasons: People have relation– ship problems, family problems, or they may do really well in school but they're just plain bored," says Reder. A practical use for the study could include finding ways to improve the K-12 school system and adult education. Although much research remains to be done, an early glimpse of the findings shows that students who learn best in ways other than through the printed word face big challenges in schools. he case studies of Randy and Doug are part of an 86-page dissertation, "Portraits in Learning," by Greg Kammann, one of Reder's graduate students and an interviewer for the project. Example after example in Kammann's paper shows how public schools cater to a narrow range of learning styles, leaving behind children who don't fit the mold. Several of the case subjects were diagnosed with dyslexia at an early age, and fell farther and farther behind as the years rolled on because ILLUSTRATION BY BRAD GOODELL/ PHOTODISC I PICTUREQUEST