CNN, May 5, 2009
Nearly 6.2 million mostly black and Latino young people have dropped out of high school, fueling what a report released Tuesday called “a persistent high school dropout crisis.”
In 2007, 16 percent of U.S. residents between 16 and 24 years old were high school dropouts, said the report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, Illinois. Among the dropouts, 60.1 percent were men, 30.1 percent were Latino and 18.8 percent were black.
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Researchers for the study analyzed the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Surveys, household data from the Current Population Survey, national data on GED certificate awards and other official sources to examine the problem at the national level and in the nation’s 12 largest states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia.
The problem affects the entire nation but hits men, blacks and Hispanics particularly hard, the study shows.
“As these data show, this dropout crisis is disproportionately affecting America’s communities of color,” said Marc Morial, president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League. “Youth from all communities deserve an equal chance at educational success.”
Among the findings in the report, “Left Behind in America: The Nation’s Dropout Crisis:”
# Nearly one in five U.S. men between the ages of 16 and 24 (18.9 percent) were dropouts in 2007.
# Nearly three of 10 Latinos, including recent immigrants, were dropouts (27.5 percent).
# More than one in five blacks had dropped out of school (21 percent). The dropout rate for whites was 12.2 percent.
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The report goes on to note: “Americans without a high school diploma have considerably lower earning power and job opportunities in today’s workforce. Over a working lifetime from ages 18-64, high school dropouts are estimated to earn $400,000 less than those that graduated from high school. For males, the lifetime earnings loss is nearly $485,000 and exceeds $500,000 in many large states. Due to their lower lifetime earnings and other sources of market incomes, dropouts will contribute far less in federal, state and local taxes than they will receive in cash benefits, in-kind transfers and correctional costs. Over their lifetimes, this will impose a net fiscal burden on the rest of society.
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[Editor’s Note: “‘Left Behind In America: The Nation’s Dropout Crisis’ A Report By The Center For Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Month Day [sic], 2007” can be read on-line here, here.
Original article
(Posted on May 5, 2009)
Comments
The answer is simple. Give every black and Hispanic man a high school diploma upon his eighteenth birthday. That way, there will be no more crime. There, that was easy.
What difference does it make if they drop out of high school? The ones that do graduate (whites included) from American high schools today don’t have anything close to a proper education. We are a nation that only 30 years ago was #1 in education. Today, we are something like #37. Having to dumb down our people for the sake of diversity has created a nation of dunces, no matter what the color.
“a persistent high school dropout crisis.”
The persistent ‘gap’ that just won’t go away.
Here in Buffalo, public school kids each get more money than kids in the suburbs and the suburban schools are still doing better so blacks can’t and don’t use the money excuse anymore (but they know it has something to do with institutional racism).
I wrote on a previous blog that my car window was bashed in by a Mexican gangbanger on a small bike. What I forgot to add was that it was at a time that this punk should have been in school, since he was clearly school aged. Probably one of those dropouts mentioned in the above article. Last I read there are hundreds of thousands in the Los Angeles Unified School district.
In some cases that I am personally familiar with, high schools deliberately understate dropout rates by not including those who don’t return after the summer as dropouts. Only those who quit in mid-year are counted. This reduces the dropout rate by 2/3, making abysmal rates of 60-70% into tolerable rates of 20-25%.
Obviously, based on outcome based needs, the only solution is to continue to “dumb down” the curriculum so that a higher percentage of black and Hispanic students succeed in receiving a diploma.
The No Child Left Behind concept at this point requires pressure to be put on teaching staff, administrators and others in the system, particularly in the state of New York where passing the Regents exam with a minimum score is a requirement for graduation. But after the “educational surge” is over, and hundreds of Teaching Fellows from Teach for America and other organizations haven’t made a serious dent in the results for minorities, there will be no choice but to find a more “equitable” system.
It’s the same principle as in the case of the exam for the firefighters which is now being debated by the Supreme Court-if the exams don’t produce the required “fair” results for certain minorities, then dump the exam.
Even those on the Left will eventually get tired of “beating a dead horse” and move towards easier graduation requirements in states like New York, and reducing difficulty of graduation requirements as they exist on a state by state basis everywhere.
I really don’t see the cause for concern, because the majority of blacks and Hispanics who do stay in school are passed simply for showing up, so a diploma is really useless. It’s no longer a measure of competence or accomplishment. The same is true with college degrees to a vast percentage of non-whites.
And, people who work in the field know that that assertion is no exaggeration.
I agree, a high school diploma is not worth the paper it is written on. I was so harassed by blacks in high school that I wanted to drop out. Considering that I was not really learning anything it was an absolute waste of time for me to even be there. Unfortunately I was kept in school by well meaning parents and an administrator that was interested in the funding that my test scores provided. I will NOT be sending my daughter to any sort of public school.
And the crazy white liberals who propose and support this nation’s suicidal welfare and immigration policies, think
Where are the jobs anyway at this time? Besides rules have been set up that even being late to class three times counts as an absence; and 5 absences takes away your credits regardless if they were excused. Also paperwork is lost and the student never gets credit even if credit is challenged. Sometimes the student and the parent give up trying to cut the red tape. Going to school is really tough in this day and age. It is very stressful with all the violence in schools. Students can’t even concentrate and do their work; they have to watch their backs. Can you blame them.
Who cares if they pass high school or not?
Dumbing down is the right phrase…I went back to school at night
“…I was kept in school by well meaning parents and an administrator that was interested in the funding that my test scores provided…”
Posted by Spartan
Yeah, the White kids only become valuable around state testing time, other than that, they are expendable.
A few years ago, I was so angry that I kept my middle daughter home on testing days. Why should I allow my child to boost the scores of a school that had done her no favors—even though she was the top math student, the math award went to a NAM because he had ‘improved’ so much. Infuriating to say the least, but I know when it comes to government schools, they close ranks and ‘resistance is futile.’
On testing day, I received a frantic call from the teacher who told me she was holding up the test waiting for my high-scoring daughter to appear. This is a teacher who had never bothered to call me before. I told her clearly my daughter would not be attending school that day or the next. It was pointless to go into reasons why.
A few minutes later, the Assistant Principal called asking me to please bring my daughter to the school so testing could commence. I repeated my assertion.
Shortly after that, the principal called begging me to bring my daughter right away as they needed to get started on the mandated state testing. I would have asked her if she bothered to call any other parents—especially non-White parents—but as she is a femi-nazi it would have been sheer folly. She was about to go into a long explanation of how it would come back and hurt my daughter in the future—which I knew was garbage.
The only thing that mattered to me was the placement test for advanced placement classes in high school. The test, when described to me by my children, seemed to be an IQ-based Raven’s Progressive Matrices-type—based on non-verbal solving of picture puzzles, sequences and patterns. Daughter got a 94%, son a 96%, minimum for advanced placement/honors is 90%.
Is it any wonder when I go to Open House or Parents’ Meetings, the entire parents’ group is made up of Whites and Asians.
Bon, Tax Slave of California
Black and latinos will outnumber whites in forty years or less, we are told. Sound bleak. Until we realize that the dropout rate, first in HS and then in university for blacks and latinos far exceeds white dropout rate. Breeding numbers may get influence with our moronic congresspeople. But well educated white people will control industry, engineering, technology, the military and finance. If we stand firm, and don’t make the mistake of South Africa, quality will prevail.
“As these data show, this dropout crisis is disproportionately affecting America’s communities of color,” said Marc Morial, president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League. “Youth from all communities deserve an equal chance at educational success.”
No, Mr. Morial, it’s NOT that the “dropout crisis is disproportionately affecting America’s communities of color,” - it’s that the dropout crisis is disproportionately AFFECTED BY THE BEHAVIOR OF America’s communities of color.
And it’s NOT that “Youth from all communities deserve an equal chance at educational success” - it’s that Youth from all communities HAVE TO EARN THE RESULT OF educational success.”
[Gets quite irritating after a while hearing perpetrators constantly trying to camouflage themselves as hapless victims.]
We already have every intention of home-schooling our daughter. The public schools have become babysitting services for aspiring criminals, with their former educational function minimized to the greatest extent the public will tolerate.
“And the crazy white liberals who propose and support this nation’s suicidal welfare and immigration policies, think
No, it is worse than even that. Our government thinks that the millions and millions of uneducated, low-skills, high birth-rate, Spanish-speaking mestizos who sneak into this country will save both SS and Medicare! The reality is exactly opposite. These poverty stricken people, their children and grandchildren will consume massive amounts of welfare tax dollars for generations to come. But in addition, because they can neither earn or save enough money from their low-wage jobs, they will have NO savings when they retire. Guess who will be paying for their SS and medicare? That’s right, us. We already know that SS will go bankrupt. Our government has just made sure that it will go bankrupt even earlier.
Public high schools are simply just a joke. Even kids who are academic superstars sometimes have to take remedial classes when they get to college and the kids who are really not college material are pushed into college classes and end up owing outragous student loans and not having the income to pay them. I think that high schools should go back to the vocational/academic model that was given up due to “equality” in the late 1970’s. Before this time kids were split up into academic programs if their test scores and academic performance in jr high was good enough and vocational programs if they were not college material. Very soon the kids (about 10%) who do not belong in either type of program are totally out of school, leaving the kids who really want an education. It is unfortunate that education is considered a “right” and kids who have absolutely no desire to go to school are kept there by threat of lawsuit by civil rights groups.
Anonymous:
It’s even worse than that. When the majority of the American population is Mestizo, they’ll just repeal Social Security and Medicare for old white people to give the dwindling Aztlanamerica resources to younger Hispanics.
The teachers unions are a key aspect of the problem. Really a wholly-owned subsidiary of the democratic party, it has ruined American public education. It has led to politically driven agendas rather than outcomes; brainwashing and thought control rather than learning.
In addition, the leftist teachers unions and the drive for “diversity” has led to endless numbers of entirely incompetent blacks pushed into positions of power in the public schools. Nearly all blacks who receive a PhD get it in the amorphous field of “education,” which, in all honesty, requires no real brainpower or thinking. It’s not physics, my friend.
An idiot, clueless PhD can still manage to be called “Doctor,” which must please all the self-inflated egos of those who have run public education into the sewer. Every large US city is now clogged with affirmative-action administrators - just look at the results.
Any organization run by low-IQ, inept managers who look after even more ineffectual subordinates (read: teachers) is bound to collapse. In a real world these characters would be fired. But in public education you are basically hired for life. There is no incentive to change or progress even if those involved actually had the intelligence to do so.
The irony is that those least able and least intellectually curious have taken over a field that requires those who are the most capable and the most intellectually curious.
It is sickening. Urban public schools have become a mini-welfare state for the lazy, the criminal, and the ignorant.
I suggest doing whatever you can to keep your kids out of public schools.
This country is turning into Rhodesia, circa 1965. The future looks bleak.
I got out of high school (and into the Army) in 1965, befor that, in lower grades, if I was absent without prior notice, SOMEONE showed up at my home asking WHY!! the idea of ditching school NEVER occured to me. I was also lucky in that my school years were pretty much over by integration time. College and tech schools, however WERE NOT!! First glimpses of the future.
‘Alright, class, can you do this simple math problem’:
85=100.
Please explain your reasons for thinking this is so, with examples from THE REAL WORLD.’
Therein lies our failure as a nation, and as an educable populace.
(For those who do not YET know, the 85 stands for average non-white IQ; the 100 stands for average White IQ. And that average is a ‘full standard deviation’ away from the ‘norm’ of 100 for whites. In former decades, a white child with that IQ (85) would have been considered ‘mentally deficient’ (I avoid the actual second word, as it is now considered ‘offensive’ but it begins with re-).
When you then acknowledge that many, many Whites of higher income, upper status (both with at least master’s degrees, etc.) who are parents, are almost fifty points higher than the ‘norm’ (my IQ is 145, for instance- I just found that out recently- not as if it has helped me find a job or anything…lol.), you can see that the ‘gap’ of children of such parents (for IQ is largely genetic) who also HOMESCHOOL their kids, clearly are making NCLB the utter sham it was, before Bush II even proposed it.
One is reminded of the old adage of sow’s ears and silk purses, which probably would not be found on a fourth-grade literature/culture test anyway, these days. Stuff like that- and ‘The Children’s Aesop,’ ‘Lamb’s tales from Shakespeare,’ ‘D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths,’ ‘Saxon Math,’ ‘Prima Latina’- such texts are all so ‘Western Culture,’ you know. And that’s how they get you to throw out intellectual rigor. Rather than acknowledge this sort of level is NORMATIVE for this age range, you dumb down EVERYTHING for the mentally deficient. “Change we can believe in…”
Please.
Bon,
Very interesting post about your children, but unfortuneately, wheather your chidren score highly on academic testing isn’t relavent anymore.
The only thing they have to score highly in is markmenship. how well they can hit a “Moving Target.” That’s essential to their survival. Not whether they’re top shelf academic students.
This is too bad, but I think it’s far more important that we educate our children in areas that will allow them to live. It doesn’t matter how smart a person is/was if they’re killed.
Tom Iron…
“…wheather your chidren score highly on academic testing isn’t relavent anymore…”
Tom:
Yes, my middle daughter found this out the hard way when she was applying to colleges in the fall. Being Salutatorian of a high school that is mostly White and Asian counts for nothing. Studying relentlessly and scoring 5’s on AP tests such as Calculus AB and CD, physics, biology and all the English exams means nothing.
Being a NAM with a massive sob story trumps grades, accolades, class placement, SAT scores, scholastic awards. THOSE are the ones being offered scholarships, awards, accolades, honors—which they neither earned nor deserve.
What does this say about a society and culture that scorns and demeans the best and brightest and elevates the lowest common denominator (giving them false hope all the while making the crushing of their dreams that much harder)?
I agree with your assertion about being a good shot—I am a very good shot—it comes from having a steady hand and lots of anger. My son is taking lessons right now—he prefers rifles, I prefer a bolt action shot-gun because I like the sound and the power.
I wonder if there will come a time when we’ll be sitting on atop a pile of cans of food firing out the front door….
Bon, Tax Slave in California
