Welcome to Literate Nation Atlanta - Founded by Dillard & Company in 2004
Join hands with us to deliver the cities most successful business executives, journalists and professionals into struggling Atlanta high schools to teach the life-skills of success and serve as role models for our inner city teens.
As seen:
There are few experiences that touch our hearts more than the intensity and excitement on a student's face as they respond to the messages of opportunity, hard work and hope delivered by Literate Nation's world-class role models. We are committed to giving inner city teens the same advantages that their suburban peers enjoy. Namely, positive role models on which to pattern their lives.
Georgia's Education Crisis
Atlanta and the State of Georgia are not living up to their educational potential. In fact, our current performance is very troubling. (46th place nationally in overall SAT scores. 45th in Graduation Rates. Dropout rate of 38% in 9th - 12th grades overall). (Sources: The College Board, The Public Policy Institute of New York State, The Anney E. Casey Foundation)
(50% of African American Students Drop Out Between the 9th and 12th Grades)
Georgia's Economic Success vs. Poor Educational Performance
Atlanta is home to more Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 Companies than any other city in the country besides New York and Chicago. Additionally, Georgia's economy is one of the fastest growing, most stable in the country.
Therefore, we believe the corporate and foundation community enjoy a responsibility to help level the playing field for inner city teens.
Why are our teens dropping out at alarming rates and testing so poorly? Because, most teens desperately need knowledge of the real world. They need to understand how the employment world works, to meet new role models and new heroes to set an example.
Why? Because the environments in which they live lack the positive influences that mold children and teens into academic achievers.
Marketing on MTV and VH1 have created a culture in which, to read, to study, to write, and to be studious is stereotyped as uncool, nerdy, or stupid. This perception is especially severe among African American youth.
The Dropout Problem is Immense - The Silent Epidemic!
Every nine seconds a student becomes a dropout in America. Approximately, 3.8 million youth, ages 18-24 are neither employed nor in school. That's 5% of all young adults.
From 2000 to 2004, the ranks of these disconnected youth grew by 700,000. Today, on average, just 67% of students who enter 9th grade graduate four years later - 33% drop out. In 2001, African American students had a graduation rate of just 50%! (Source: American Youth Policy Forum)
In Georgia, the overall graduation rate for 2002 was less than 60%. (Source: The Silent Epidemic, by Civic Enterprises, Peter D. Hart Research Assoc. for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
Why do Students Drop Out?
Student survey respondents report different reasons for dropping out:
1. A lack of connection to the school environment. 2. Not motivated or inspired to work hard (69%) 3. A perception that school is boring (47%) classes not interesting 4. Spent time with people who were not interested in school (42%) 5. Had to get a job and make money (32%) 6. Became a parent (26%) 7. Had to care for a family member (22%) (Source: The Silent Epidemic, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
The overarching factor that leads to students dropping out is environment. That is, because of their home environment, students did not see, were not effectively taught, did not get, did not believe, had no role model to teach them about the direct link between the hard work required to excel in high school and:
1. Graduating high school and getting a good job. 2. Getting into college and acquiring financial aid. 3. Graduating college and securing a great job. 4. Elevating their socio-economic status 5. Obtaining the power to earn enough money to live well.
74% OF HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS SAID THEY WOULD HAVE STAYED IN SCHOOL, KNOWING WHAT THEY KNOW TODAY. SUCCESSFUL, WORLDLY ROLE MODELS AND MENTORS CAN HELP.
Inner City Teen Perception vs. Reality in the Working World
Inner city students build their view of the working world from the information available to them in their daily lives. Surrounded by family and friends, to whom college and academics is foreign they develop their list of "dream careers" based on teen media channels like MTV, VH1 and YouTube.
Rappers, musicians, athletes, models, actresses etc. that have defied the odds and risen to positions of self-determination and power, represent, in many cases, our teens heroes - the only career to which these children aspire. This despite having NO concept of the odds against success or the realities of the lifestyle.
When they are taught to understand the low average salary of individuals working in these professions, their views regarding the importance of education change dramatically.
We have presented to thousands of students and they are consistently blown away, their false image of the working world destroyed, when we deliver the income information contained in the chart below. The question that we are working to form in their minds, "How do you get one of those high paying jobs?" always comes next.
How can teens get to the 9th and 10th grade and not already understanding these basic facts of life?
BECAUSE, THERES IS NO ONE IN THEIR LIVES WITH THE EXPERIENCE TO TEACH THEM!
The American Marketing Culture vs. Selling Teens on Education
50% OF AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS DROP OUT BETWEEN THE 9TH AND 12TH GRADES
Today's high schools do a poor job of making the connection between getting a good job, living the good life and the intense work required to make As and Bs. Why? Because, educators don't have the time, the resources or the expertise to make this case effectively.
Combine this situation with the distractions that confront teens everyday: Gangsta Rap, neighborhood gangs, peer pressure, TV, internet, instant messaging, video uploads, music downloads, iPods, it's a wonder more students don't drop out.
Could you work day and night to excel, given these influences, if you had no one to teach you about: (1) What it cost to live well (2) The future consequences of your decisions (3) Self-discipline (4) Time management, to pound into your brain the importance of school, and therefore, you didn't understand the payoff?
Why Teachers can't Sell Education to Students
Our education system is designed around the assumption that students come to school ready to learn. More than half don't!
Let us make our views clear. Teachers and principals are the heroes of the education system. They work long hours - invest their lives into teaching their chosen subject and receive marginal wages.
However, since most teachers have either been employed in education all their lives or are just entering the workforce from college or graduate school they have no experience in the business world and thus limited credibility when selling education to students influenced by competing messages.
Therefore, students who are not taught the importance of education (for whatever reason) by their parents, their extended family, their friends, their parents friends or some other important adult in their lives form the firm opinion that school is a joke irrelevant to their survival in the larger world.
The Cost - When Teens Drop out of School - Society Faces Multiple Negative Consequences
The Cost to the Individual:
High school dropouts earn an average of $21,447 or 1/3 of the average college graduate at $63,000.
Dropouts are 2.5 times more likely to die
45% of dropouts will not have jobs
The Cost to Society:
Dropouts cost the U.S. more than $260 billion
Lost wages
Lost taxes
Lost productivity
75% OF STATE PRISON INMATES ARE HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS! 59% OF FEDERAL INMATES ARE HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS (Source: American Youth Policy Forum)
Why Should Middle Class Parents and Business Leaders Care?
1. We are all Americans! These are our children too.
2. Children growing up in the U.S. today face increasing global competition for jobs. In fact, it is more likely today that a U.S. college graduate will face competition, in their bid for an information technology job, from a college graduate in India than from another a U.S. graduate. Additionally, while we think of our country as one of the most educated in the world, it is not.The U.S. stands 16th out of 20 developed nations in the number of students graduating high school and 14th out of 20 developed nations in the number of students graduating college. Further, India, still ranked as a developing nation, graduated a million more students from college than the U.S., in 2001.
