I will be using the high school drop out rates of Oregon, Multnomah County (Portland), and Douglas County in order to demonstrate the different opportunities, resources, and success of education in certain regions. As demonstrated below, Douglas County has almost twice as high of a dropout rate as the state-wide rate. The Oregonian reported that even within the Roseburg School District, where we spent most of our time, the on-time graduation rate of the 2015 Roseburg High School senior class was only 77%. The other district school, Pheonix School, had a startling graduation rate of only 12%. While Pheonix High School suffers from a number of different social realities, the two school still demonstrate the difficulties of education in a region that suffers from a lack of various public resources.
2014-2015 Student Dropout Rate – All Students
Institution | Fall Membership | Dropout Count | Dropout Rate |
Oregon State | 179,747 | 7,649 | 4.26 |
Multnomah County | 27,126 | 1,125 | 4.15 |
Douglas County | 4,639 | 393 | 8.47 |
The Oregon Department of Education defines a dropout as, ” a student who withdrew from school and did not graduate or transfer to another school that leads to graduation. Dropouts do not include students who:
- are deceased,
- are being home schooled,
- are enrolled in an alternative school or hospital education program,
- are enrolled in a juvenile detention facility,
- are enrolled in a foreign exchange program,
- are temporarily absent because of suspension, a family emergency, or severe health problems that prevent attendance at school,
- received a GED certificate,
- received an adult high school diploma from a community college.”
My two main pieces of empirical evidence influencing my thoughts (these dropout rates and the per capita income from my previous post) both have made me realize that the direction of my questions is heading towards the relationship between Douglas County and the Federal Government. It is really difficult to study the impacts of other environmental groups in the area because they mostly work through the government – Endangered Species Act, etc. My work will instead use the government as a reflection of those groups with current public environmental opinion.
The disparities between both the economic and educational success of Douglas County in comparison to Oregon and the rest of the US demonstrate that the county as a whole is subject to the power of the government. In particular, the government has been able to, for the most part, dismiss the hard-hitting results of the Endangered Species Act on Douglas County. The lack of both taxes and timber revenue mean that the county has had to pose the option of cutting out resources such as libraries in order to prevent bankruptcy. This means that a region with low high-school completion rates is needing to cut even more educational resources.
Now, Douglas County is a perfect situated context to explain the complexities of environmental studies; while it is true that the county is dealing with an economic downturn, the current and former County Commissioners that we talked to (Chris and Doug) mentioned during our class conversation that, rather than raise the extremely low taxes on the county, they would choose to return to the logging, resources-dependancy that first brought wealth to the county. This is often used to explain why the county is just as at fault as the federal government in the current situation. This is another reason why I am choosing to study the individuals of the county – through education and per-capita income – in order to try demonstrate the disparities within the county without the contradictions of the county government decisions.