U.S. School Dropouts: Uncovering Causes of an American Crisis

The documentary begins by illustrating the notion of school dropout in the United States. Brandi Brevard, the campus coordinator, explains what students especially those within the age gap of 16 and 17 years, typically deal with problems outside the school. Their daily involvement wrestles on things that are outside academics and instruction (Comeau n.p). At the same time, the FRONTLINE expanded an entire semester to uncover the causes of school dropout that thousands of American kids are facing. It renamed the documentary the 'Dropout Nation' to expression the leaving school epidemic and crippling dropout rates that seem to cloud the country's future. Brevard maintains the engagement with students since she has understood that already students are ostensibly the focus of 'Dropout Nation.'

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The FRONTLINE asserts that many Sharps-town students are poor, and most of them originate from the African-American backgrounds such as Latino. Even before the documentary was filmed, the school was characterized as a dropout factory (Comeau n.p). Consequently, school workers claim that across to 70 percent of student problems they deal with are external to academics. For example, Brevard houses four students, and each of them is labeled by different difficulties. First, we meet Marcus, an intelligent student who is worthy to focus, but family issues make him not to attend to school. Marcus ends up staying with Brevard since he has the calmer paths to college. Lawrence, on the other hand, is about to graduate, but his emotional state gets in his way. Marco is the last kids housed by Brevard, and to him, he suffers from a lot of problems such as lack of self-awareness, which makes it difficult for him to succeed in school.

The documentary also talks about "Sparkle," a youthful woman who is vivid however overly defensive and hurt ("I do not want to talk about my life since I do not want to cry in front of all these people"), inhibiting her development. His elder brother ("Lawrence") is about to graduate he is brilliant as well. However his fury and motivation issues make him lose the focus. Marco is also mentioned in the documentary as the only student of the four who is not intelligent (Comeau n.p). However, the most surprising thing is that Marco can unmistakably prosper in the university at the end of the semester.

The documentary does not delve on what inspires the children in the classroom but displays an exhibition of Sharpstown's involvement in an "Apollo 20" program meant to assist belligerent schools in developing more engaging programs which will inspire bored students. Some of the measures include broadening the school period and offering an hour and 10 minutes of math teaching for all ninth grades, e.g., axioms like "accountability" and "human capital."

Brandi Brevard portrays some success on the penultimate day of school talking about the math marks at Sharpstown being the top in the region, which meant that the plan that was proposed and implemented materialized and bore positive results. Furthermore, there's self-assurance that pervades the documentary, which proves that success is possible and this is the main focus of reviewing the film (Parr n.p). However, the challenges are seen in "Dropout Nation" is intelligent and smart children drop out or retrogressing due to the external problems, and the administration is doing nothing to address the current problems. For example, when an administrator purports to tell Sparkle that being a student requires to be her most important priority, she provides feedback that the main focus is to ensure there is a shelter every night and a plate of food on the table.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the documentary depicts an external problem and if it is not solved Sparkle, and other bright kids will drop out of school (Parr n.p). However, "Dropout America" does not focus much on deliberating some of the dropout information or the notion by many kids leaving to private school. However, it does focus on remarkable observations that there were "diploma mill" entities which for $300, will offer quick test and then grant a diploma to these kids. It is displayed in an inherently shocking and terrible; however, what drove me to do a review of the documentary to figure out more on the contents of the test.

Works Cited

Comeau, Joseph, Judy Orton Grissett, and Jamie MacLennan. "Contemporary Social Problems." (2016).

Parr, Alyssa. "Academic achievement motivation and high school dropout: an integrative model." (2013).