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Madison LaPlante

Mrs. Jackie Burr, Instructor

Notebook #8

17 May 2019

Refuting Someone’s Work: Notebook #8

In the essay, “The Effect of Employment on Student Outcomes in High School and

Beyond” by Dan Laitsch, discusses the effects of how high schoolers are changed by their part

time jobs. This essay was written for readers to make an informed and educated decision on high

schoolers with a job. This article does not have a perspective on the topic. The author is simply

relaying information brought by the data done by two employees of the American Educational

Research Journal.

The author begins by stating statistical evidence on the amount of working high school

students in our country. After this, Laitsch transitions to discussing how American teenagers

work more than most other teenagers in any other countries. I believe this to be false because

many children and young adults work in surrounding countries, but it may not be for

compensation. In other third world countries, agricultural and factory jobs are more prevalent to

young workers. In an interview by Martha Nichols, Jonathan Stein, a CEO of a contracting

company, depicts the harsh reality of many young fourteen year old girls in factories sweeping in

India, Pakistan, and more (Nichols).

Laitsch discusses a data study which was done by ​Herbert Marsh and Sabina Kleitman

which was done by demographics. To avoid becoming biased, the author should have included

statistics and facts that have nothing to do with race, sex or religion. When tying in this idea of
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demographics, the issue no longer becomes about working in high school and the effects of one

particular issue. It is morphed into the idea of race, sex, and other contributing factors affect a

teen’s performance in high school and beyond. Besides including an unnecessary trait of high

schoolers, the data did not include, “dropouts, students who transferred from their schools, and

students who did not graduate with a high school certificate within the traditional time allotted”

(Laitsch).

Laitsch also organized his article by subtitles, such as: the question, the details, the

caveats, and more. This style of writing seemed to break up ideas, but it also seemed to prohibit

any professionalism brought by the topic. Instead of having a MLA style paper, or even APA,

Laitsch took a different route. It flows as a abstract would flow, but consists information of a

professional essay. The approach is unorthodox and did not see anything else like it throughout

any of my research.

In conclusion, the author of, “The Effect of Employment on Student Outcomes in High

School and Beyond” made good points, but the paper as a whole fell short due to unnecessary

demographics included in his data, and unorganized publication of his work. The essay could be

improved if Laitsch had one perspective and followed that idea throughout.