Page 3 - In Focus Newsletter_June 2019_Neat

The Stigma of the Dropout Label

By Gregg Weinlein, CASDA Faculty Member

June. A month of high school celebrations in New York State.

Last year, 169,000 students received their secondary school
diplomas. Graduation rates remain a major benchmark in the
bureaucracy of our education system. And they should be.
According to NYSED, the graduation rate in 2018 was 80.2
percent - a slight trend upward in recent years.

Unfortunately, just over six percent of NYS high school students terminated their high school
careers and lost their opportunity to walk across the stage and celebrate with family and friends.
For these students, their more than decade-long journey in our schools could not culminate with a
high school diploma.

And what should we make of the 12,736 students who leave school without a high school diploma?
What should educators think? What should parents think? How should our educational
bureaucracies respond? And, most importantly, what should the students think who did not
receive their diploma?

R e a d M o r e

Confronting Graduation Rates and Dropout

Interventions

What are we doing to connect with and
support students from an early age that
we identify as potentially being at-risk for
dropping out? What can we do after a
student fails to graduate to help them

eventually lead successful lives?

A free solution to support and professional development for practicing educational leaders,
CASDA's Virtual Educational Leadership Collaborative recently featured a podcast focused on

confronting the dropout stigma. In the episode, CASDA Executive Director Michael Piccirillo sat
down with CASDA faculty member Gregg Weinlein, who spent the entirety of his 36-year career
working with at-risk students. They discuss graduation rates, interventions, and how schools and
the education system often fails and then stigmatizes its most vulnerable students.

L i s t e n t o t h e P o d c a s t