Blogs:

Our Education Secretary Arne Duncan is all geared up to meet Mayor Frank Jackson of Cleveland next week. He is on a mission to initiate greater involvement by the community to ensure more number of students graduate for after all, he says that a high school graduate needs an entire community in order to graduate.

Along with the Mayor, he will also meet state and city school officials, civic and community leaders. A lot of gap requires to be filled in the lives of students. Our education secretary is aiming on achieving this by pushing nonprofit, civic, business and religious institutions to fill this gap left by school schedules and school budget.

In a telephonic interview, Duncan said that these are hard economic times and school districts are certainly trying hard. He said that the entire community must cooperate and work around their effort which is why some of the work done in Cleveland will be highlighted by them.

Some of the ideas he will be putting forth towards achieving goals include longer working hours for schools, offering family literacy or ESL classes for families, GED classes for parents and health care clinics with the help of social service agencies and nonprofits. There is also a proposal for provision of mentors and tutors by faith based communities.

Duncan says that internships could be provided by the business community. He points out to the number of children who wade through day to day challenges just to attend school and get great grades working hard and it is imperative to reward them. For them, envisioning a positive feature is very important and this could be done by giving them an opportunity to work on internship and summer job.

Duncan will be traveling around Cleveland by bus and one his first day stops include Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Along with Eric Gordon Chief Executive of Cleveland schools, Stan Heffner, Superintendent of Ohio schools and Jackson, Duncan will head an East Technical High School panel.

Others who are invited to this are community service leaders, Cooperation for National and Community Service CEO Robert Velasco II, Office of Faith based and Neighborhood Partnerships of the White House executive director Joshua DuBois.

The aim here is to ensure that dropout rates come down to zero. Duncan says that there has been great improvement in Cleveland schools. As today’s job market requires more than a high school diploma, some form of high education is necessary for every graduate, he said. The aim here is to ensure that every single youngster must aspire for some form of higher education that could be technical training, community college or university education.

He says that summer jobs, after school tutoring, internships and community involvement with mentors can help students pursue their dreams and achieve what they aspire for after graduating from high school.

It all sounds very convincing but it is first essential to take steps to implement ideas and proposals with focus. Any step that can enhance our graduation rates and help students is always welcome.