Dropping
Out: Beyond the Numbers, a Matter of the Heart Montreal, QC, April 27, 2009 (Please check against delivery) Distinguished Guests,
Many thanks to the Canadian Club for its invitation. And thanks to all of you for joining us this afternoon. Before going any further, I also want to thank McKinsey & Company, and in particular Éric Lamarre, the managing director of the firm’s Montreal office, and his entire team, who did a magnificent job – entirely on a volunteer basis – in close cooperation with the around thirty persons I brought together to form the Groupe d’action sur la persévérance et la réussite scolaires, the action group on student retention and success. Among these persons, I’d especially like to mention Michèle Thibodeau-Deguire and Dr. Gilles Julien, who are here with us today. Our report, Knowledge Is Power, was made public in March and has generated quite the reaction. My talk this afternoon, like my new book, focuses on my personal reflections and the many discussions I’ve had since the report was published. All responsibility for them is mine alone. I’ll begin by presenting a quick overview of the situation. First, a few numbers. 41.2% of the students enrolled in secondary 1 in 2002 still hadn’t graduated in 2007, that is, by the end of the normal period for finishing high school in Quebec. Five years. Only 69% of young Quebecers celebrate their 20th birthday with a high school diploma or the equivalent in hand. That’s exactly where we were two decades ago. Despite all the effort and the millions of dollars invested, we’ve not made the slightest headway. By way of comparison, I’d point out that Ontario recently announced that its high school graduation rate has risen from 68% to 77% in the last five years. According to the Statistics Canada’s latest Labour Force Survey, Quebec ranks ninth among Canadian provinces for 20- to 24-year-olds who are part of the labour force and do not have a high school diploma. We were seventh in the preceding survey. Another figure that creates enormous confusion is the much-touted 85% that places us among the world leaders in the high school graduation rate for under-30-year-olds. Another of these denials that we Quebecers love. According to the study that produced this celebrated 85%, Greece ranks first among the countries surveyed, with – get this – a graduation rate of 106% among women and 102% among men and women taken together. More graduates than actual heads! I must be missing something… By the way, even if it were true that Quebec could boast of an 85% high school graduation rate, how could it be that an OECD study last year showed that the functional illiteracy rate (grade-2 reading level) among Quebecers between the ages of 16 and 65 is 49%? That would mean a significant portion of our graduates are illiterate! We’re talking about 2.5 million Quebecers in that age bracket. It’s not exactly reassuring to know that many of our graduates have trouble reading what’s written on their diploma. What’s the cost of these low graduation rates? A dropout earns, on average, $15,000 a year less than a high school graduate. That works out to $439,000 gap by the end of the dropout’s working life. And that’s not only for the dropout but also for his or her family. This significant difference in income also represents a major loss of revenue for the government. How much? A cohort of dropouts – the approximately 28,000 young people out of the 90,000 that start secondary 1 in a given year – costs the government nearly $2 billion. In decreased tax revenue. In additional costs for social assistance, employment insurance and higher legal expenses. In second-generation costs. And that doesn’t include the higher health care costs also associated with non-graduates. Add to that the significant decrease in citizen participation, because dropouts generally vote less, volunteer less and donate blood less than graduates do. I cite these statistics merely to underscore the scale of the dropout problem in Quebec. That said, I want to make a very important point. These data do not in any way constitute a value judgement of persons who don’t have a diploma. I know several who make an exceptional contribution to society, who raise happy families, who are role models in their communities. I simply want to convince young people of the importance in today’s world of having completed a qualifying training program attested by a diploma. And, yes, I said a qualifying program. You can be a plumber, truck driver, nuclear physicist or whatever. What’s important is that you be qualified to do what you like doing, every day of the week, throughout your entire life. That’s what matters. Beyond the numbers too often lurks a human tragedy for dropouts. Why? Because being a dropout often means having to lower your expectations about life. Besides earning less money, it also often means living less long and suffering from poorer health. Being a dropout can be a heavy burden to bear. It means hearing “no” more than a fair share of the time. It means being told “no” when you apply for a job, knowing that your résumé is going straight to the “unqualified” pile, even when the position is still open. Ask the organizers of the job fairs, which are breaking all records these days. There were 1,800 exhibitors at the Montreal Job and Training Fair last month. Thousands of jobs available, but few applicants with the skills necessary to fill them. It’s the same story elsewhere in Quebec. And yet the baby boomers will soon be retiring en masse. In 20 years, there will be only about two persons of working age for each person age 65 or over. Can you see the social problem that’s looming before us? If, on top of that, a significant percentage of young people are unqualified, the going may get very rough indeed. Being a dropout also means not being part of the wave of dynamic young people who are setting out to conquer the world in the knowledge society. It means feeling like you’re not on the same playing field as others, not able to keep pace with a society that’s changing at breakneck speed. It also means imposing on your family the consequences of your limitations. That, too, is part of the dropout’s tragedy. The terrible knowledge that you have fewer resources for your children, are less able to help them with their studies, are even less likely to act as a role model for them. All of that is what I’m referring to when I say that dropping out is a human tragedy. It’s also why I say that beyond the numbers, dropping out is a matter of the heart. Several people have told me that all we need to do is follow Ontario’s example and everything will be fine. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The dropout phenomenon is beginning to be well documented. Several initiatives to help these young people have also produced useful data. Among these initiatives is CRÉPAS, founded in the Saguenay–Lac-St-Jean region by professor Michel Perron, who was also one of the people involved in launching our action group. We now know that dropout determinants can appear as early as a child’s birth. Some people say even before birth. For example, the cultural endowment a child receives can be a dropout factor later in the child’s life. That’s what has led Dr. Gilles Julien, who works with youth in Montreal’s Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhoods, to insist that it’s essential to act on the entire continuum of the child’s life, to support the child from early infancy through graduation. You don’t help a child who lives in a disadvantaged home and whose parents are illiterate the same way as you help a child who comes from an affluent family but is dealing with “substance use” issues. You don’t intervene in a neighbourhood where education isn’t valued the same way as you intervene in a neighbourhood where people value education but don’t have the resources to provide their children with an education. In other cases, you may be dealing with learning difficulties that, if something isn’t done at the right moment, could lead directly to dropping out. For example, several people working in the field have pointed to our critical shortage of speech-language pathologists, which means that the children who need help are often left to their own devices. And that’s not counting the many children who suffer from dyslexia but are never diagnosed as doing so. We’ve all seen this film before, many times before: the student goes from the regular class to the special education class and then, one fine day, drops out. And with the added human tragedy of a child rejected by his or her schoolmates, branded as “slow.” Such humiliations often offer no outcome other than dropping out. The conclusion is easy to draw: “one size fits all” doesn’t work in the dropout field. Hence the strategic importance of basing all action on sound research. That’s the best way to understand the problems of the target clientele we want to help. That’s what’s done in every successful initiative in Quebec and elsewhere. Several of them are very well documented, which makes it possible to identify the features that these success stories share. The Action Group on Student Retention and Success studied a number of initiatives. I don’t have time to summarize them for you this afternoon. I’ll simply mention that the Pathways to Education program in Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood, one of the most disadvantaged in the Queen City, has succeeded in reducing the dropout rate among its young people by – hold on to your hat – 86%. Regent Park’s graduation rate is now comparable to that of Toronto’s most affluent neighbourhoods. And, believe me, they weren’t anywhere near that point when they started: 56% of their young people dropped out prior to the program, 8% do today. In other words, we can make a difference. It’s just not true that there’s nothing to be done. The Pathways program is currently being implemented in Quebec, in particular in Verdun under the leadership of Pierre Côté, president and executive director of Toujours ensemble as well as a member of our Action Group. Toujours ensemble is funded in large part by the Richard J. Renaud family’s Roasters Foundation and by Centraide. Several U.S. programs to promote student retention also produce excellent results. Check & Connect reduces the dropout rate by 33%. Career Academy by 34%. High/Scope Perry Preschool by 38%. In Quebec, CRÉPAS helped raise the graduation rate of the young people involved from 66.2% in 1991 to 76% in 2008. All these successful initiatives have several features in common. I’ll quickly run through them for you. First, all the initiatives are rooted in the community and rigorously managed by an enthusiastic and respected leader. But as in hockey, even the best puck handler – a Kovalev, say – can’t perform miracles without a strong team around him. The biggest successes are the result of a solid partnership involving the community, government services, civil society and the business sector. Because dropping out concerns all of society, not just the school the young person attends. Initiatives have to be built around the young people themselves – their individual needs and the dropout determinants that apply to each of them – and not according to some abstract structure that that doesn’t reflect the reality on the ground. Another key point is that it’s essential to begin supporting the young person and his or her family from early childhood on. Waiting until the end of high school to address the drop out problem is often a case of too little, too late. Another major point: a relationship of trust must often be established between the student at risk of dropping out and an adult who will act as the young person’s coach, mentor and service coordinator. A responsible adult, capable of showing great understanding while avoiding indulgence. Of course, it’s also necessary to have funding in line with the needs, funding that’s adequate, sustained and predictable. I’ll add another prerequisite for success to the initiatives we studied. It’s essential to constantly evaluate and document the work being done so we can adjust our aim, if necessary, part way through the process. How can we know where we stand if we don’t document anything? As Albert Einstein said, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So far, we’ve seen where Quebec is in terms of the dropout rate. We’ve looked at what’s being done in a few places to support young people. The question now is what can be done across Quebec? What’s our game plan? First, we need to set a goal. I believe that if we succeed in raising the graduation rate among our under-20-year-olds from the current 69% to 80% by 2020, we’ll have done a good job. How do we go about achieving this? By launching a citizen initiative across Quebec, the likes of which have never been seen, in support of our young people. A veritable Quebec-wide “graduation bee” aimed at helping our youth. Fortunately, we’re not starting from scratch. Far from it. A large number of initiatives are already under way. But sitting around the action group table, we were too often told that intensity was lacking. What’s being done well is not being done intensively enough or for a long enough time. And the funding… Well, the funding is inadequate and often completely unreliable. For all anyone knows, it could end tomorrow. Yet there’s already some good news in this area. The Fondation Lucie et André Chagnon, in partnership with the Quebec government, will invest $50 million over the next five years to help fund the IRCs, the regional bodies for student retention and success. I’ve received letters, e mail messages and comments left on my blog from hundreds of individuals and organizations that want to help. This rising tide of volunteerism needs to be organized and structured to produce the best results. And what’s the game plan? Our plan puts priority on the actions that directly involve children. What should always be borne in mind is that it’s absolutely essential to intervene at the earliest possible moment in the lives of at-risk children and their families and to provide close follow-up throughout the child’s life. I know I already said it. I’m repeating myself because it’s so important. I’d like to go into a little more detail about a few actions that directly concern the business community. You can read about the others in my book. I strongly stress the importance of making it easier for young people to choose trades and technical occupations and of encouraging them to do so. The deficiencies in guidance counselling and choosing a career are at the root of many dropout stories. That’s what a lot of dropouts tell me. Comments like “I left school because I didn’t see the connection between what we did at school and what I wanted to do with my life” are legion. Enrolment for courses leading to trades and technical occupations are too low, largely because young people know nothing about this reality. Already, in some regions, programs are in place to facilitate contact between young people and the labour market as well as the trades and technical occupations within their reach. I was in St-Hyacinthe last week and learned that the chamber of commerce and school board have just committed to this kind of initiative. Business people, professionals, technical workers, women and men who work in various trades will visit schools to tell the young people about their reality. Young people will be invited to visit workplaces to discover a world they’re unfamiliar with. One example is the days when parents are encouraged to bring their daughter or son to work. Children often don’t have a clue what mom or dad actually does at work. Such days are a great opportunity for them to find out and, perhaps, become interested in it. Other activities are also planned. I believe that these programs should be increased in order to demystify the reality of trades and technical occupations for children who are leery of a world they know little or nothing about. Other initiatives are under way in the Abitibi, Montérégie and other regions of the province. Companies are pooling their resources to help local schools provide children, especially children in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods, with a school environment and even a living environment that’s more conducive to learning. My company, for example, takes part in one such project, called 80, ruelle de l’Avenir, along with Gaz Metro and other partners including Radio-Canada, the Commission scolaire de Montréal, CGI, and the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec. We have transformed an annexe of Garneau school, near the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal’s Centre-Sud district. The school’s roof is now a terrace called Place de l’Avenir (“future square”) and has a flour and vegetable garden for young people and their parents to visit. The annex has been renovated and now houses six thematic workshops, including a test kitchen, a botany room, a multimedia centre and a science workshop. The gym has been done over and is now also a space for artistic and cultural expression. In short, we’ve given young people a living environment that encourages discovery. Children from nearby schools also have access to these facilities. The people who work with the children come from Dr. Julien’s Projet 80 and social pediatrics project. Companies can help young people a lot by adopting a more disciplined approach to hiring them. In some regions, companies convince young people to leave school in order to start working sooner. When such practices are unavoidable – because of labour shortages, for example – why not balance them with a commitment to help the young people complete their studies while they work? I’m also thinking of the many companies that hire young people as part-time employees while they’re in school. This is a practice that employers should establish guidelines for, guidelines that demonstrate understanding around the issue of work schedules. That don’t impose unreasonable work schedules on students, for example. That make allowances when the students are facing course deadlines or exams. In short, that lend a hand to young people to help them successfully complete their studies. That make them realize the importance of a diploma. We business people would be among the main beneficiaries of a well-educated workforce in sufficient numbers. Companies can also help in the fight against dropping out by donating goods and services to student-retention initiatives. Several such initiatives have been in the works for a few weeks now, including in the media and communications sector. I’ll leave it to each organization to make its announcement when the time comes. Other young citizens are also in the process of setting up a Quebec-wide network to visit schools and speak to young people about their trades and professions. They’re trying to recruit young adults whose experience would be motivating for students. In any case, a lot more motivating for young people than listening to an old guy like me tell them about his career as a banker. Of that you can be sure! Next fall, you’ll witness the Quebec-wide rollout of an enormous Web-based initiative led by another group of young business people and designed to mobilize thousands of young volunteers who will work closely with the school system and organizations accredited to intervene with young students. We’re currently hard at work on it. I encourage you to look through my book to get a better idea of all the projects that make up the action plan. As I said, prepare yourself for a veritable citizen movement against dropping out in Quebec. A lot is being done already, I know. What’s needed now is to better structure these actions, to provide the necessary human and financial resources and to develop and distribute work tools inspired by the world’s best practices. You are probably wondering how much it will cost to reach our goal of an 80% graduation rate. The entire plan as proposed – that is, implementing the ten actions described in the Knowledge Is Power report – will cost $35 million to $64 million a year during the one- to three-year startup phase. The subsequent operating cost will be in the $137 million to $237 million range. Bear in mind that significant sums are currently being invested in the fight against dropping out. Some of those monies could be used to fund some of the proposed actions. Do you find that expensive? But it’s not. I know you can do the math as well as I can. I’ll remind you that a young person without a diploma will earn, on average, $439,000 less than a graduate over the course of their respective lifetimes. A single cohort of dropouts costs society nearly $2 billion. And I’m not talking about all the other invaluable advantages that a diploma procures for its holder, for his or her family and for society as a whole. In concluding, I encourage you, all of you, to join in this new citizen initiative taking shape to win the fight against dropping out of school in Quebec. The graduation bee has begun. You can contribute in any number of ways. You have skills, means and resources that can help make a difference. Each, yes, each and every one of you can make a difference, if only by encouraging the young people you know to continue their studies. Join this movement against dropping in Quebec. I promise: you’ll be proud of yourself because, beyond the numbers, it’s a matter of the heart. Thank you for getting involved. *****
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