Bad Rap on High School Graduation Rates
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Seventeen of the nation’s 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates lower than 50 percent, with the lowest graduation rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland, according to a report released Tuesday.
The report, issued by America’s Promise Alliance, found that about half of the students served by public school systems in the nation’s largest cities receive diplomas. Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said.
Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma and about 1.2 million students drop out annually.
{snip}
Summit in every state planned
{snip}
The report found troubling data on the prospects of urban public high school students getting to college. In Detroit’s public schools, 24.9 percent of the students graduated from high school, while 30.5 percent graduated in Indianapolis Public Schools and 34.1 percent received diplomas in the Cleveland Municipal City School District.
Researchers analyzed school district data from 2003-2004 collected by the U.S. Department of Education. To calculate graduation rates, the report estimated the likelihood that a 9th grader would complete high school on time with a regular diploma. Researchers used school enrollment and diploma data, but did not use data on dropouts as part of its calculation.
Many metropolitan areas also showed a considerable gap in the graduation rates between their inner-city schools and the surrounding suburbs. Researchers found, for example, that 81.5 percent of the public school students in Baltimore’s suburbs graduate, compared with 34.6 percent in the city schools.
In Ohio, nearly 83 percent of public high school students in suburban Columbus graduate while 78.1 percent in suburban Cleveland earn their diplomas, well above their local city schools.
Disparity in data
{snip}
States calculate their graduation rates using all sorts of methods, many of which critics say are based on unreliable information about school dropouts. Under No Child Left Behind, states may use their own methods of calculating graduation rates and set their own goals for improving them.
The research was conducted by Editorial Projects in Education, a Bethesda, Md., nonprofit organization, with support from America’s Promise Alliance and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
{snip}
[Editor’s Note: “Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytic Report on High School Graduation” can be read or downloaded here.]
(Posted on April 1, 2008)
Comments
Gosh Mr. “Cup Is 2/3 Empty”, look on the bright side! When Detroit gets to the point where nobody graduates, NCLB will have reached its grand fruition (or grand fruitation as one of my bosses used to put it).
Posted by at 6:17 PM on April 1
What is it about cities that make schools so rotten? Then again, what is it about cities that make guns behave so badly?
Posted by Question Diversity at 6:25 PM on April 1
I wonder what level the class valedictorian is on in Detroit? Probably somewhere around 6th-8th grade level I would think.
Tom Iron…
Posted by Tom Iron... at 6:33 PM on April 1
Replace ‘suburban’ with white and ‘urban’ with black/hispanic. Same findings we always find. 15 point IQ gap means it’s unlikely they can graduate high school even if they want to. Trying to teach complicated subjects to low IQ people is pointless, give them job training or something. Better yet, just separate the nations and let them handle their own problems.
Posted by Diamed at 7:02 PM on April 1
and the one’s who “graduate” have what, a third grade education?
the effort to educate the masses of blacks was always a mistake; now it is a very costly mistake, but a mistake nonetheless
There is only so much one can do with a population with a mean IQ of 80 in the field of “education”. There was a time, in the not too distant past—-turn of the 19th century—when a man was considered “educated” if he could read the classics in Latin and Greek and had an introduction to the physical sciences. Today’s “educated” elites are no match for such individuals; today’s blacks have no chance of ever becoming truly “educated” on that model.
When we the educational elites simply recognize reality and stop wasting the tax payers’ money on attempts to make scholars out of thugs?
Posted by at 7:18 PM on April 1
“Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said.”
What’s next, doing away with urban areas? Clearly these urban areas are the root cause of the problem, afterall race is just a myth.
Posted by Robert at 7:27 PM on April 1
Oh gesssh…now can any of you Amren people figure out why that is…..we should let G W and the rest of the morons in washington really know…but …they do not hear us….cause we are all sane people he loves the nuts of the world!!
Posted by lydia at 8:00 PM on April 1
The local talk shows and TV shows are all over thid topic. It’s hilarious to hear people talk around the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room!
All trying to pin the blame on teachers, standards, and schools. Not one utterance of the content of the “students” occupying those seats in the classroom.
The end result will be districts stealing money and time from AP classes(white students), trades, and the arts. This country continues to spend increasingly obscene amounts of funds just to push minority up a point or two. Laws of diminishing returns is showing in these drop-out rates.
Posted by Mike at 9:17 PM on April 1
“When will the educational elites simply recognize reality and stop wasting the tax payers’ money on attempts to make scholars out of thugs?”
Posted by at 7:18 PM on April 1
My sentiments exactly.
Too, I would like to ask the people who constantly publish these statistics if they think the blacks who do receive a diploma really did anything other than show up, without missing too many days. Certainly they aren’t required to pass tests anymore to show competence of the subject matter.
So what if inner city black graduation rates increase substantially? That doesn’t mean they are proficient beyond semi-literacy.
There are no standards when it comes to black pupils.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 9:36 PM on April 1
“Gosh Mr. “Cup Is 2/3 Empty”, look on the bright side! When Detroit gets to the point where nobody graduates, NCLB will have reached its grand fruition (or grand fruitation as one of my bosses used to put it).
Posted by at 6:17 PM on April 1”
Yep…if you never leave the starting line, it’s physically impossible to be left behind. Leftist pretzel logic at its best.
Posted by Wild Eyed Charlie at 10:35 PM on April 1
This is one quantification of the demographic surge that is a blight upon America. As a percentage of the population, there will be fewer and fewer whites and other educated ethnic groups who will be taxed to death in a vain attempt to bring up an increasing percentage of dysfunctional minorities who have no inclination to graduate from high school. Then, many of these minorities will join the gang “culture” that is very difficult for law enforcement to control.
Because of these trends, America is being transformed into a Latin America type society where the well-off will live in gated, guarded communities (where they will have good schools) and the rest of the population will have to fend for themselves.
I will also predict a trend where teachers will refuse to teach in such horrific schools. Of course, under GW Bush’s infamous “No Child Left Behind Act” those students will be bused to better schools in a vain attempt to bring them up. In the process, they will ruin the education for, and probably rape and assault your children.
Posted by Skipper at 11:16 PM on April 1
How is it that one of the worst cities of them all, Indianapolis, is 71% White? Must be an awful lot of stupid Whites there. And let’s not forget that even Cleveland is 41% White, and is barely even majority Black (51%). Must be an awful lot of Whites failing there too. Detroit is the only very Black city on this list that has a terrible failure rate.
I can’t believe you people actually think that a population with an IQ of 85 is so stupid they cannot even graduate from high school. Cubans have an IQ of 85 and all or nearly all of them graduate high school. Cubans are one of the best, if not the best, educated people in Latin America. With 2% of the region’s population, they have 10% of the scientists. All with an 85 IQ. Go figure.
85 IQ US Blacks are perfectly capable of graduating high school in very high percentages. The rates are so high not because they are stupid but due to cultural reasons.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 12:07 AM on April 2
I just thought of a fun way to refer to the No Child Left Behind act.
Call it the “No Child Below Average” act.
The stupidity of the concept is highlighted quite neatly this way.
Posted by Reader-1 at 12:22 AM on April 2
“How is it that one of the worst cities of them all, Indianapolis, is 71% White? Must be an awful lot of stupid Whites there.”
How did you get out of junior high with such poor reading comprehension? The crucial element is not the percentage of whites in Indianapolis but the percentage of *Indianapolis Public School Students* who are white, as these are the only students counted in the survey. This is bound to be a far lower number than 71%.
“Cubans have an IQ of 85 and all or nearly all of them graduate high school.”
If this is true (and I take nothing from you on faith) it says a great deal about the quality of that schooling. Cuba is some kind of scientific powerhouse? Maybe by the standards of mestizo nations but not by any white or Asian measure.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 12:35 AM on April 2
The low graduation rates in the city schools are due to their higher standards. Any idiot can graduate from a suburban school, but only true geniuses can graduate from a city school April fool!
Posted by flyingtiger at 12:53 AM on April 2
NIGHTLY NEWS: Graduation rates
African-Americans = 53.4%
Whites = 76.2%
Posted by james at 1:27 AM on April 2
The ‘solution’ that will be demanded and implemented will be that ‘we have to get these struggling kids into good schools’. Watch for a new call to ‘integrate’ suburban schools.
Even if you don’t want to acknowledge race, moving kids around hasn’t worked in the past. Both blacks and whites know this. An intelligent proposal would at least be to study high performance schools and emulate them in city schools. But there’s the problem. Black kids can’t be expected to emulate white kids and as such, they require special education plans tailored to their ‘unique’ and ‘special needs’. Consequently, schools that try to educate blacks have to educate them using ‘black learning styles’ which is nothing less than guaranteed failure.
Busing them to better schools would only exacerbate the problem. It would also require the eroding of standards that work for white kids to be replace by standards that in theory are supposed to work for blacks be fail both black and white kids.
I fear that far from waking people up to the realities of race, this is only going to force good schools (suburban and white) to accept and accommodate blacks. And that only leads to what this article is about.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 6:54 AM on April 2
Don’t worry, even if they don’t make it through high school, the system is designed to accomodate them as underrepresented minorities so they will be given jobs, health care, etc. What I don’t see is why we don’t just go ahead and get rid of this last vestige of meritocracy, dispense with the formalities of forcing students to think and work for grades at all, and simply award a set amount of degrees to the students based upon race- if 30% of a school’s students are black, give them 30% of the degrees each year. The kids are going to have to get used to going out into society, either for college or a job where this occurs. One could also dispense with some of the teachers this way (at least the white ones), as fewer subjects other than African American History, Hispanic History, Political Science, and English (select essays by minorities) would have to be taught. This would save some more money to give to social programs for underrepresented minorities.
Posted by Student at 11:53 AM on April 2
According to AP the high school completion rates:
Asian 80%
White 76%
Hispanic 58%
Black 53%
Native American 49%
Even the relatively low 20% rate of failure (for asians) to complete high school on time does not seem all that fantastic.
Posted by Paul Morphy at 12:29 PM on April 2
Not to burst your bubble, but Cubans of European descent are incredibly intelligent and productive citizens. It’s only when you factor in the mulatto and colored classes does the average IQ of a Cuban begin to fall. One of Castro’s goals was to
delegitimize the European Cubans. Those are the ones who fled to the United States.
Posted by Ed at 2:04 PM on April 2
Just another example of (black brain power in action) need I say more?
Posted by T Rexx at 4:08 PM on April 2
85 IQ US Blacks are perfectly capable of graduating high school in very high percentages. The rates are so high not because they are stupid but due to cultural reasons.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 12:07 AM on April 2
————————————————————————————————-
If not for low IQ, what makes a culture have such terrible values and poor behaviors?
Posted by Robert at 7:00 PM on April 2
“85 IQ US Blacks are perfectly capable of graduating high school in very high percentages. The rates are so high not because they are stupid but due to cultural reasons.”
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 12:07 AM on April 2
You just admitted blacks have low I.Q.’s and they have low graduation rates.
But here’s something else that will place an additional strain on you, as a self-hating white: The black I.Q. average is a bogus one really, if the truth is known. Because of the usual volume of out-of-control whining I.Q. tests were altered years ago to favor blacks, making it appear as if black I.Q. increased.
The few I.Q. points that did increase among blacks were due to including mulattos and blacks with a high percentage of white blood into figures representing pure blacks.
The true black I.Q. average in the US is not much better than the African average of 70. Blacks fight tooth and nail to prevent the US government from including a “mixed race” category on demographics, because they realize that that would just be the first step in pulling mulatto figures out of the black averages, causing them to plummet in every category that is marked by race.
And it could very well cause spinners of the truth from those of you on the left to have nervous breakdowns, because your ability to defend the indefensible would be set back seriously.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 7:12 PM on April 2
“Not to burst your bubble, but Cubans of European descent are incredibly intelligent and productive citizens.”
No argument (if you’re talking to me) but I suspect very strongly that “whiter” Cubans are disproportionately likely to have come to the US, leaving the others in Fee-del’s worker’s paradise. I’ve known a fair number of Cubans; I believe they were all or mostly Euro.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 8:39 PM on April 2
Robert, genetics can have effects on behavior completely outside of IQ. I think this is where a lot of Black problems reside. 85 IQ is not that low on world-scale terms. There are nations that have IQ’s of 85 or lower that are very wealthy, for instance, in the Gulf Arab countries. Also most of the other Arab and ME countries have developed some fairly well-developed societies - Syria, Palestine, Iraq (before our invasion), Jordan, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya and Iran. Many of these nations have extremely low crime rates, especially violent crime. Egypt has a lot of poverty, but for most Arab countries, they are hardly living in squalid hovels anymore.
Western Samoa (IQ of 86) and Indonesia has an IQ of 87 and has a very low rate of crime and other pathologies.
IQ is not an end-all and be-all, and I think the high Black crime rate is caused by inherited personality type that is largely independent of IQ. I have taught Black 3rd graders whose behavior was terrible, but Black 8 yr olds now have IQ’s of 93. So much for “ineducable”
Robert Kelly’s post is completely wrong. US Blacks have had 85 IQ for a very long time now, and IQ tests have not been adjusted or made easier at all. These are all just lies. In fact, every 10 years, they have to make the IQ tests harder because people (including Blacks) keep getting smarter and smarter. Black (Jamaican) IQ in UK is ~85 too and has been for a long time now. The similarities in IQ between US (base IQ = 73) Blacks and UK Jamaican (base IQ = ~74) Blacks indicates that placing low IQ Blacks in a Western society alone raises their IQ’s by ~11-12 pts. E Indians in UK also see an ~11 point IQ rise just by living in a Western society. So putting 73-85 IQ ppl in the West can raise their IQ’s by 11-12 pts.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 10:15 PM on April 2
There is already loud screeching around my school district about how to go about raising abysmal graduation rates—with the solution, of course, being yet MORE teacher indoctrination (known as professional development).
Said professional development will include studying non-White/Asian ‘learning styles’, enforcement of Gardner’s specious seven intelligences (so morons too can be ‘intelligent’ in some made-up bogus manner) and, as always the usual cries of institutional racism as being the root cause of black and hispanic educational failures and poor rates of graduation.
For God’s sake what will they impose on teachers next that hasn’t been tried repeatedly with the same dismal results?
At least I’m not hearing much about the self-esteem movement these days—it took over a decade for the non-teaching educational theorists to finally realize that self esteem is earned and not endowed and that imbibing kids with a false sense of self-esteem will never result in their succeeding—and often produces the opposite results.
Mainstreaming, unfortunately is still the order of the day—that means placing a child with an IQ of 55 next to a child with an IQ of 155 and expecting the same result—all of this in a classroom of 35+ children with one exhausted teacher. More educational psycho-babble so low functioning children don’t have to have their feelings hurt.
From the esteemed Robert Kelly:
“…Certainly they aren’t required to pass tests anymore to show competence of the subject matter..”
This is why so many private businesses are testing both high school and especially college graduates with their own literacy tests. Of course non-Whites/Asians instantly label these tests as ‘racist’ and immediately instigate lawsuits to drop any form of job testing.
From Mike:
“…The end result will be districts stealing money and time from AP classes(white students), trades, and the arts. This country continues to spend increasingly obscene amounts of funds just to push minority up a point or two…”
School districts are already doing this. My middle daughter’s English teacher told me he personally battled the local school board for two years to preserve honors and AP classes which the board was furiously trying to eliminate. He won in the end but told me it almost killed him. The entire educational-industrial system is anti-White, anti-intellectual, anti-achievement and bottom driven.
From sbuffalonative:
”..Busing them to better schools would only exacerbate the problem…”
White parents are very well aware of this and many of them are choosing to abandon (with good reason) the government schools.
As I’ve mentioned before, my youngest son is home schooled and our coalition doubled from September to December, again right after the New Year and is looking to double again before September. I’ve also noticed an increasing number of Asians lately at our meetings.
I am convinced that only a rudimentary educational level is attainable for many non-Whites/Asians; the problem is an IQ gap which is not ‘fixable’ no matter how many symposia I’m forced to attend or however many new earth shattering theories (and I’ve been forced to sit through them all) the leftists in the ivory towers come up with.
As one of my colleagues says: “You can’t pour brains into them!”
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 10:32 PM on April 2
I just returned from Cuba. Once there you will notice that while Cuba use to be racially mixed, today the vast majority of the population is black. Anyone ) with ambition or unwilling to live out their lives as a Communist peasant-soldier left the country. Much of Fidels appeal to the Cubans that remained behind was that he promised “equality”. Though the country is in ruins, and nothing works, the blacks remain loyal to Fidel because he shelters them from reality and competition. Little is expected of them and they get their one room cinderblock apartment and a little state welfare.
Posted by at 10:48 PM on April 2
“Robert, genetics can have effects on behavior completely outside of IQ. I think this is where a lot of Black problems reside.”
Yes, black impulsiveness and proclivity to violence are probably also genetic.
“The similarities in IQ between US (base IQ = 73) Blacks and UK Jamaican (base IQ = ~74) Blacks indicates that placing low IQ Blacks in a Western society alone raises their IQ’s by ~11-12 pts.”
A completely begged question, since it assumes the environmental influence you pretend to prove. If the general, ambient influence of “western culture” (which I suppose has nothing whatever to do with the genetic makeup of its founders but merely fell out of the sky on Whitey on fine morning) is so powerful, why is every single conscious attempt to raise black intelligence by manipulating their environments—Head Start, the Milwaukee Project, etc. ad infinitum—a complete failure? Why do blacks raised by white parents attain IQs on average only one or two points higher than blacks raised by blacks (eg. the Scarr-Weinberg study)? Riches, laurels and awards await the psychologist or social engineer who can rig a smarter black, but yet it hasn’t happened.
Posted by Cassiodorus at 11:40 PM on April 2
Cassiodorus, you make a very valid point. If environmental influence is a factor in racial disparity, why can’t anybody, including blacks themselves find this elusive environment where they can function at the same level as whites? It is to the point of being absurd to keep blaming environment when one can’t produce an environment to support that opinion.
Posted by Robert at 7:45 AM on April 3
Don’t tell me… let me guess: Those students NOT graduating are with almost NO exceptions… Afro-American or Hispanic?
Now answer MY question, please: WHY on earth should White Americans actually feel sorry for Blacks, and NOT BLAME BLACKS for being unable to break out of their perpetual cycle of crime and poverty?
Posted by Fed Up at 8:12 AM on April 3
“Students in suburban and rural public high schools were more likely to graduate than their counterparts in urban public high schools, the researchers said.”
They could have saved a lot of ink by simply saying “White kids.”
Posted by Sensitivity Trainer at 1:00 PM on April 3
Watching the liberal commutarian ‘educators’ come up with ever-new tortured excuses for perennially poor black performance in public schools is a lot like watching a three stooges movie.
Each time one sap saps another, everybody acquires a lower IQ.
Posted by Gary at 3:01 PM on April 3
Robert Kelly’s post is the most enlightening one to date and it makes Robert Lindsay’s special pleading for some unknown (but apparently real) quality Blacks possess to make them just like Whites…. Unfortunetly for Lindsay, dereistic, oneiric thinking is common among leftists. Guess, though, who has to pay the bill for their dreamy thinking that places a procrustean, forced integreation: White taxpayers! Lindsay would balk at his ideas if it were Blacks and Browns having to foot the bill for education. The Whites of previous generations-not beholden to P.C.’s proctrustean ways-had enough wisdom to separate themselves from an abyssal situation we see all around us because of “Enlighted patricians who know what is best for us”. But they can’t see the dark abyss for the sake of the Blacks…..
Posted by White is Beautiful Robert at 5:00 PM on April 3
“There are nations that have IQ’s of 85 or lower that are very wealthy, for instance, in the Gulf Arab countries.”
We have been on this site for over four years, and this assertion is the most irrational that we have seen.
They have oil, which they didn’t even know was there until pointed out by Westerners. Oil, which would be utterly without value, without the White Man’s industrial revolution.
A wealthy country is one inventing and manufacturing…
Posted by uncle & mrs. cremus at 7:42 PM on April 3
Robert, the public school students in those cities are much blacker than the populations as a whole.
Posted by Joe at 8:35 PM on April 3
I would like to see a comparison of graduation rates for cities like Billings, MT, Coeur d’Alene, ID and Blairsville, GA with those of Compton, Detroit, Camden and other big cities. What is the difference between the two groups? Is it something in the water?
Posted by fire eater at 12:52 PM on April 4
“How is it that one of the worst cities of them all, Indianapolis, is 71% White? Must be an awful lot of stupid Whites there. And let’s not forget that even Cleveland is 41% White, and is barely even majority Black (51%). Must be an awful lot of Whites failing there too”
It’s quite simple. The whites go to private schools. I know of Cleveland, and the only whites who attend public school here have no choice. The Catholic schools are what enable people who must live in Cleveland (police and fire)to live there. The public schools are simply not an option for whites.
Posted by William Hendershot at 3:26 PM on April 4
Its always entertaining to watch the media walk over eggshells and write things so vague and sophistically as to avoid the obvious correlation between high drop out rates and race. Big city = not white, suburb/rural = white. They’re trying to make a largely black problem look like its a social problem, and therefore everyone’s problem. These problems will not be resolved by labelling them as social problems and thereby shifting the weight of the burden onto middle America.
Posted by Frankie at 4:20 PM on April 4