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Albany, NY – THE GI BILL, PT. 1, THE HISTORY -
Ken Burns' new documentary series, The War , airing on public television stations, has once again piqued people's interest in the second world war.
The series comes at a time when military actions around the world are in the news daily. With last month's Veteran's Day, and the anniversary this month
of Pearl harbor, we thought it would be important to review America's
GI Bill, the legislation that gave veterans a free college education. This week, a look at the history of the GI Bill right after World War II. Next week, we'll get an entirely different picture of how today's military veterans returning from Iraq and elsewhere are using their education benefits for college.
Dan Bobkoff reports. (4:08)
DROPOUT FACTORIES HIT HOME -
While the veterans we heard about in our first story dropped out of school to
fight a world war, many of today's students are leaving school for a number
of other reasons. It's happening with such frequency, that many of these schools are becoming known as dropout factories. So just what are dropout factories? They're defined as high schools where 60% or less of the students who enter high school make it to their senior year. According to an analysis conducted by Johns Hopkins University for the Associated Press, there are
1,700 of these so-called dropout factories in the United States. Of that total,
the state of Indiana has ten high schools so called. Among those, six are in
the state capital of Indianapolis, and two are in Gary, Indiana, the home city
of our Producer, Glenn Busby. In fact, the high school he graduated from,
Lew Wallace High School, is named a dropout factory with a graduation rate
of just 47%. How does this happen? To help us try and understand, TBOOK spoke with school counselor, Elmer Molchan, who has been on the job for 52 years and has lived through this transition period.
Glenn Busby reports. (11:05)
POSITIVE OPTIONS -
As another example of how so many educators are extremely concerned
about students leaving high school before graduation, we turn to
Massachusetts. There, Berkshire Community College (BCC) and Drury
High School in North Adams, Massachusetts, are marshaling their forces
to try and insure more students obtain a high school diploma. To find out
what they are doing, TBOOK has this report on the new Positive Options program.
Carrie Saldo reports. (2:33)