This is “not a sudden act, but a slow process of disengagement from school”(Bridgeland, 103). In “The New Dropout Challenge,” Bridgeland shows how that gap between teachers and students has come about by emphasizing how the perspectives on why students are dropping out differ between the teachers, parents, and students. He states, “If they are not more fully understood and bridged, they will continue to set back efforts to keep more students in school” (Bridgeland 102). Since students are leaving through a slow process of disengagement, the teachers need to find methods in order to engage each student’s interest. Instead, they are teaching “about Plato, Shakespeare, the French Revolution, and nuclear fission, but not about cars, dating, fashion, sports, TV, video games” (Graff,787). “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, who is a professor at the University of Illinois, has written 3 books, and aided in writing “They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing, explains how our education system is not focusing on what interests the students, but rather what interests the educational institution. Therefore, the students do not see a correlation between what they read in class and what they practice outside of …show more content…
Rong Chen gives a clear message that engaging students both socially and intellectually is important. She further states “evidence indicates that institutional expenditure on student services is negatively associated with student dropout behavior” (487). In other words, as the spending of resources for student services goes up in a school, the dropout percentage decreases. Therefore, if a school is supported by a community that is not poor, then the school will have the resources to enable teachers to adapt to student’s interests, increasing the graduation