The opinion piece below appeared Nov. 19 in the Charleston Gazette. It highlights Generation Charleston’s recent Education Forum, which brought together minds to come up with potential solutions for the state’s high school dropout rate.

By Dawn Miller

“What if we took research seriously?” asks the senior scholar at Child Trends. She was talking about preventing teen pregnancy, but her question has many applications.

For example, I recently had the opportunity to participate in an event organized by Generation Charleston. Scores of people of all ages gathered downtown to brainstorm and strategize for 30 minutes on an important topic: About 6,900 West Virginia students drop out of high school every year. That’s about one in four students who enter high school but don’t come out the other end. What on earth do you do about that?

Good on Generation Charleston for getting conscientious people together to identify one solid recommendation to take to the Legislature. It was a nice crowd, full of people from the school system to the justice system, for-profit, non-profit and government.

My hangup is that there is no shortage of knowledge or even fresh ideas for solving this problem, or most of the problems kids face.

On the contrary. We know which solutions work in which situations. Let’s pick a proven tactic and do it.

I like this one: Make kids go to school. When they don’t show up for school, find out why, help the family fix that problem, and get the kid back in class.

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