The city of Franklin, New Hampshire got a gift in the new Republican state Budget. A grant for $125K to address its distinction of having the third highest dropout rate in the state.
FRANKLIN — Franklin will receive $125,000 for dropout prevention through a grant that was included in the state budget passed yesterday.
“I was surprised,” said School Administrative Unit 18 Superintendent Daniel LeGallo. “I did not expect to get it.”
The grant will allow the school district to expand high school offerings that keep students interested in hopes of reducing the district’s dropout rate, which is one of the highest in the state.
Governor John Lynch never did get the state to “zero dropouts” as he hoped but the mechanics behind “improving” those numbers are still the same.
Back in 2010 with the help of favorable majorities in the Legislature and Executive Council the Democrats made some changes to help the phantom goal of a drop-out-less New Hampshire appear to be a reality. They raised the legal dropout age to 18, then crafted a manifold of exit strategies that made nearly any path out of high school a documented public education success. And wouldn’t you know it, the “drop-out” rate dropped out.
It didn’t really. The education industrial complex changed the rules. Internally, the practice of fudging and hedging poor performance in the classroom into passing grades is also common. The entire exercise is tied to money, not education. Schools want money and regulators have to check boxes to release it. Union contracts are all about money and power-politics, that is to say using power and politics to get more money. District success is about money. Graduation rates are about money.
Yes, teachers want to teach kids but teachers answer to administrators and administrators answer to money.
College admissions departments confronted with a growing majority of enrollees who can’t pass basic math and language competencies know it is true, but they don’t say much because they too are about the money. To meet the new demand “Higher Education” has “college courses” that teach 9th and 10th-grade Math and English (at levels previous generations mastered before high school) at the same rates as any other course.
They get paid and the drop-outs that didn’t drop out in high school drop out in college after paying (mostly liberal) adjuncts and progressive profs for the privilege, often with taxpayer-backed loans.
So what about Franklin? They are thinking about using that $125,000.00 in taxpayer gravy to add some fun classes. This might keep the kiddies in the classrooms long enough to get them graduated, whatever that might mean. And there’s the rub. The district will want to show some progress and that might mean almost anything but it won’t necessarily mean kids got educated.
6/26 Update: fixed a few textual irregularities.
