Survey Finds Role Models, Career Guidance Could Keep More Mich. Kids in School
A survey from the Michigan Education Association provides clues about why some kids drop out of school – and what teachers and parents can do to make sure they don't.
According to the survey, one out of five young adults in Michigan lack job or career goals and more than that say schools are not providing much help. Among all young adults surveyed, 25 percent said they didn’t receive job or career direction in high school. Among high-school drop-outs, 55 percent said they did not get that kind of help.
MEA commissioned the poll as part of an initiative to end the state's dropout crisis.
In an interview with WWJ Newsradio 950, Ed Sarpolus, director of government affairs for the MEA, said simply showing students the future relevance of what they are learning in class could help convince most would-be drop-outs to stay in school.
“There is no cookie-cutter approach to solving the drop-out issue,” Sarpolus said. “Each student is different. But there is one common theme, though, from this recent study: they all want to know ‘why am I in school? And if they do, their chance of drop-out drops precipitously.”
Among the other key findings from the MEA survey were:
Eleven percent of high school juniors or seniors plan to end their education with high school, will not graduate on time or will dropout. The number nearly doubles (21 percent) for those lacking job or career goals.
While 4 percent of those polled haven’t completed high school, 10 percent of those who lacked guidance in high school haven’t graduated.
Nearly 30 percent of all respondents said they didn’t have a role model in high school, but more dropouts and more individuals without job and career goals said they didn’t have role models (73 percent and 54 percent, respectively).
Twenty-four percent of those with goals said they were unemployed compared to 45 percent of those who said they have no job or career goals.
Survey participants identified parents, teachers or counselors and siblings as the most influential people in their lives.
Two percent of those polled said they had actually dropped out of school; 6 percent said they had considered dropping out.
Sarpolus said one encouraging thing from the survey is that, in many cases, simple intervention can be the key to keeping students from dropping out of school. While some students in danger of dropping out have specialized needs, he said, most just need to be mentored and kept motivated.
“Students say 'just talk to me, work with me on a regular basis ... and you’ll see that I’ll be motivated and I’ll stay in school.'” Sarpolus said.
The telephone survey of 500 Michigan residents was conducted May 12-21 by the Lansing-based firm EPIC-MRA.
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A survey from the Michigan Education Association provides clues about why some kids drop out of school – and what teachers and parents can do to make sure they don't. 
