Why Some Education Innovators Are Going Back to The Future

There’s a dirty little secret about most high school graduations. A diploma supposedly certifies what a student has learned and can now put to use. But too often, students are passed along, grade to grade, until a diploma is given—not earned. 

Take a look at the latest state-based assessments, and you’ll see what I mean. In Illinois, 53 schools contain not a single student proficient in math; in Baltimore, it’s 23 schools. According to the latest Institute for Education Sciences School Pulse Panel, nearly half of the nation’s students entered school last fall below grade level in at least one subject.  

It’s no wonder why so many drop out before graduation.

The Department of Education currently counts 2 million 16-to-24-year-olds neither enrolled in high school nor possessing a high school diploma or a GED.

Cristina Gulacy-Worrel knows that situation all too well. She dropped out but now advocates for more education with Ohio’s Oakmont Education, a network of more than a dozen public charter schools throughout the Buckeye State. “We forget about dropouts because it’s easy and convenient,” she said. “Oakmont’s mission is to give students who had been benched opportunities to become starters.”

Ninety-five percent of Oakmont’s starters are low-income; many, when first enrolled in one of Oakmont’s schools, are reading at the elementary school level; 24 percent have disabilities; and more than a tenth are teen parents. 

But those numbers only tell part of the story. The flip side is this: since opening its first school in 2018—Frederick Douglass High School in Cleveland, with just 40 students—Oakmont has turned around more than 2,600 of what the traditional public schools wrote off as “lost causes.” Most students earned industry certifications in construction, culinary arts, general business, health care, IT, or manufacturing, as well as their diplomas. 

Oakmont recognizes that dropouts don’t lose their potential to contribute simply because of their educational status. Oakmont offers dropouts a second chance at education—at lifelong learning. Ultimately, Oakmont’s goals are to restore students’ capacity to hope and provide them with a pathway to the middle class—and in doing so, help address the worker-shortage problem affecting too many communities.

Other organizations around the country have been equally successful in their efforts to engage at-risk youth in ways that keep them from dropping out, or reengaging those whom most traditional public schools have forgotten.

We found many such examples among the 2,700 education entrepreneurs who competed last year for the Yass Prize. There’s the SailFuture Academy, a tuition-free private high school in Florida that prepares students for careers in the maritime, culinary, and construction industries. Like Oakmont, SailFuture focuses on forgotten students poorly served by “the system”: students in foster care, 50 percent of whom never complete high school and are too often passed along until they “age out.”

Then there’s New Orleans-based unCommon Construction, which is using part of its $500,000 award to expand into Minneapolis. The program’s founder said that “eighty-one percent of high school dropouts say relevant, real-world learning would have kept them in school.” The kind of learning that unCommon Construction offers its students opens up pathways to higher-paying jobs in a state where the dropout rate currently exceeds 14 percent. These hands-on apprenticeship opportunities empower students to earn a salary and qualify for trade certifications—all funded by the sale of student-built houses. 

These Yass Prize-winning programs and other efforts are empowering America’s next generation of leaders and are helping local employers find the workers they need in their own communities. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported 50 percent more job openings in Ohio than the number of people unemployed and looking for work—and nearly twice as many openings as unemployed in Florida and Louisiana. There are more than 1 million unfilled jobs nationwide. So the need is there, and education innovators are meeting the moment. 

Innovation involves identifying a problem and developing solutions—without waiting for permission. If more people in American education will embrace this approach, all students will be better off.