The Importance Of Staying In School Shared By Speaker

Ronald Langston of Langston Global Enterprises, LLC. addressed the William Penn Student body this week over the importance of staying in school.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – Ronald Langston was this year’s guest speaker at the William Penn Convocation, and is principle of Langston Global Enterprises, LLC.

Steve Noah, former Vice President at William Penn University invited Langston to speak this year. “I’m very impressed with the facility and very honored to be in this school. This is an institution that really has a great legacy, with the Quaker Friends, of equality and opportunity. That’s why I’m honored to be here.”

Langston also spent the years between 2001 and 2009 as a presidential appointee for President George Bush as National Director for Business Enterprise in the US Department of Commerce. “I’m very interested in entrepreneurship and very interested in making sure that we’re very competitive in the global economy, and I want young people to know that education is very, very critical as we go forward in the future.”

Langston speech was to focus on education, “and particularly a lot of statistics about the importance of being engaged.” Langston expressed concern about the dropout rate, “particularly among African-Americans and Hispanic students.”

Langston spoke about the “50% dropout rate among certain groups. Even the dropout rate among whites is near 20% in some rural areas.”

“To me, if you want to be a great country, you want to be competitive,” Langston added that, “If you have a dropout rate like that at high school, you’ll never get into college. College is very, very tough these days to finance. So we just want to make sure we encourage these young people to stay in school and to reach back to their brothers and sisters and their school friends and say: Stay in school. Don’t drop out. Stay engaged.”