PSU Magazine Fall 2003

teachers weren't equipped to help them. Others were sim– ply poor at learning from books, but were excellent visual learners. When shown how to do something, they got it almost immediately. It's far too early to draw conclusive answers from Reder's study as to the exact reasons why students drop out. Clearly they're dropping out in large numbers. More than 1,500 Portland high school students dropped out in 2001-02, a number equal to enrollment at one large high school. But Reder isn't ready to blame the public schools. "Schools can't be expected to solve society's social ills. They inherit them rather than cause them," he says. Many of the subjects in the study left school because they were bored, felt like they didn't belong, or had school performance problems. Yet Reder says a large number of the people interviewed-40 percent-said school was a posi– tive experience. "They liked school, but they dropped out because they had to work or they had family problems. There are lots of reasons why people leave school," he says. Although the study has turned up plenty of individuals who have gained financial success, two-thirds of those interviewed were living in poverty. Regardless of the reasons why they dropped out, Reder is mostly interested in how they fared once they entered the work world. Specifically: Do people's literacy skills change after they leave school? What life experiences are associated with those changes in literacy skills? What's their level of participation in adult education? And if their literacy levels change, what impact is there in their social and economic lives? ust how literate these former dropouts become and how adept they are at living fruitful lives depends on their upbringing, their personal lives, and in many cases, sheer force of will. Charles, a 35-year-old African American Kammann inter– viewed, didn't let the fact that he didn't finish high school stand in the way of working as many as four jobs at a time-including janitor, truck driver and hotel bellhop– over two decades to gain a level of economic comfort that has evaded some of his peers. His family instilled him with a strong work ethic and the importance of friendly people skills, and those attributes are paying off. Doug, the computer programmer mentioned previously, learned skills for his profession even though he has dyslexia, because he simply wanted to succeed. On the flip side, Sandy, a young mother of two boys, considers herself unemployable because she needs to attend to her two sons, one of whom has a learning dis– ability. Her situation is made worse by the fact that she was raped at 12, molested by her stepfather, and went from one abusive marriage to another. Her current hus– band has a long criminal record and is unable to get work. Why have some dropouts succeeded and others failed? Part of the equation has to do with whether a person later on seeks adult education opportunities. "We're struggling to understand what person tends to gravitate toward formalized adult education," Reder says, which is usually defined as getting a GED (General Educa– tional Development), the equivalent of a high school diploma. The GED was implemented after World War II to give returning vets who rushed off to war before finishing high school a chance to catch up. Back then, one could go a long way with just a high school degree. These days, Reder says, the bar is set a lot higher: Most good jobs require a bachelor's degree as an educational minimum. ther research has shown that most people who prepare for the GED say it is because they want to go on to college. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of those who do earn a GED enter college, and of those who go on, only a small percentage receive their degree. Reder sees the failure rate as the result of a couple of factors. One is that the same problems that pushed people out of high school to begin with (family problems, poverty, substance abuse, for example) are still there after they receive their GED. The other problem is that even though they've gotten their GED, they missed out on all the infor– mation and counseling high schools provide to help students go on to college, including help with applications and financial aid. To the extent that the study gives insight on adult edu– cation programs, this may be one of its clearest prescrip– tions for improving adult education: Provide more of a college orientation. ne of the things Reder is seeing at this point is the desire among people who drop out for more educational choices: tutoring, for example, or community college classes that they can access on the Web. Many of the interview subjects would be able to access these kinds of education more easily-because of personal demands or their own learning style-than attending classes outside the home, he says. The hunger for learning is there. Of those who pursue their GED, nearly half have also done a fair amount of studying on their own. Even one-third of the people who have never participated in adult education classes have studied by themselves to improve their skills. "This suggests that a substantial reservoir of individu– als may be actively trying to improve their skills, and that programs are not reaching (them)," Reder wrote in a recent report. New ideas on how to support these inde– pendent learners-through distance technologies and new media, for example-are needed to better connect them with adult education programs, he added. Then, perhaps, the gap between the educational "haves" and "have-nots" will begin to close. □ FALL 2003 PSU MAGAZI E 13