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BLACK MALE DROPOUTS LEAD NATION IN INCARCERATION, ACCORDING TO NEW REPORT, WEEK OF OCTOBER 22-28, 2009The Wilmington Journal Originally posted 10/22/2009 SPECIAL TO THE NNPA FROM THE LOUISIANA WEEKLY (NNPA)--On any given day, nearly 23 percent of all young Black men ages 16 to 24 who have dropped out of high school are in jail, prison, or a juvenile justice institution in America, according to a disturbing new national report on the dire economic and social consequences of not graduating from high school. Dropouts become incarcerated at a shocking rate: 23 of every 100 young Black male dropouts were in...

DETROIT – Like the rundown houses and shuttered storefronts in his Detroit neighborhood, bleakness abounds in LeRoy Taylor's future. He is among tens of thousands reaching adulthood in a city where the American Dream appears just outside their reach. Taylor, 20, spends empty hours on basketball courts, zoned out in front of a television or aimlessly pedaling through streets he desperately wants to leave, but doesn't have the work skills, education or money to do so. "I fill out applications. No one will call me back," said Taylor, stopping his bike long enough to hustle change for cigarettes near a...

Derrius Quarles leans back in his seat and methodically analyzes Aristotle's theory of truth during freshman honors English class at Morehouse College. He strides across campus in a navy blue tailored suit and a bold red sweater handing out business cards that boast "Student/Entrepreneur/Leader." But behind the 19-year-old's dauntless appearance is a past that few on campus know. When Quarles was 5, the state took him away from his mother. He spent his childhood bouncing from home to home before ending up on his own at 17 in an apartment on Chicago's South Side. His arrival at a prestigious, historically...

It was the middle of the night. I was asleep. My mom came in and started punching me. She said I didn't fold my clothes right. I threw her off of me. She was real drunk. She started on me again. The police came. She said: 'What? I'm just kicking my son's ass.' Just another night. -- Carlos, 17 :: The little school in South Los Angeles is the end of the road, reserved for those who have bombed out of the rest of the system. The mildest cases were merely kicked out of their last school. The toughest are...

There are, however, other reasons why minorities seem to be more at risk of swine flu. Low-income parents have a harder time keeping their sick children home from school. "For some parents in lower-wage jobs, if they don't show up at work, they don't get paid, and people may already be on the economic margins," Barry says. "So parents were desperate to get some of these children back in school." As a result, there were many sick, contagious kids in Boston classrooms this spring. Because of the economic pressures and demographics of the Boston school system, most of them turned...

AMES, Iowa -- As a new mother herself, Brenda Lohman admits to being shocked by the results of a new study she co-authored. It found that among nearly 1,000 low-income families in three major cities, one in four children between the ages of 11 and 16 reported having sex, with their first sexual intercourse experience occurring at the average age of 12.77. "So if 12 years was the average age here, that meant that some kids were starting at 10 or younger," said Lohman, an Iowa State University associate professor of human development and family studies (HDFS). "A handful of...

AUGUST 10, 2009 Unemployment Among Teenagers Remains Stubbornly High ERICA ALINI Economists don't see much relief for unemployed teenagers in a recession that has trimmed hires and pulled many adults into the scramble for jobs typically held by teens. Unemployment of people ages 16 to 19 was a seasonally adjusted 23.8% in July after hitting a quarter-century high of 24% in June, the government said last week. That compared with last year's summer peak of 20.5%. Caleb Cross, 16 years old, waits to apply for a summer job funded by stimulus money in Fort Worth, Texas, in June. Traditional teenage...

Reclaiming High School Dropouts by: Emily Kanyi, July 29, 2009 Early evaluation results from a study of the National Guard Youth Challenge Program (NGYCP) released by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) indicate that over 90,000 teenagers have graduated from the program designed to mentor high school dropouts and give them educational opportunities. The sixteen-year-old program targets youth between sixteen and eighteen years of age. NGYCP currently operates thirty-three programs in twenty-seven states and Puerto Rico. According to the initial report, more than seventy-four percent of the beneficiaries have gone on to earn their high school diploma or equivalent, thirty percent...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― "At Myra Bradwell Elementary School, 44 out of 77 students did not pass the eighth grade. A startling number of children are falling through the cracks at one Chicago Public School. More than half of the kids didn't even pass the eighth grade. As CBS 2's Jim Williams reports there is fierce debate about who's to blame. It is a debate that has gone on for years in poor communities: do you blame the schools for the students' poor performance or do you blame their parents?"......

A startling number of children are falling through the cracks at one Chicago Public School. More than half of the kids didn't even pass the eighth grade. As CBS 2's Jim Williams reports there is fierce debate about who's to blame. It is a debate that gone on for years in poor communities: do you blame the schools for the students' poor performance or do you blame their parents? The mother of a one student who failed eighth grade says she got no warning her son was struggling. The school says she was notified, and other parents insist she did...

Claims of bias against women in academic science have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, men are becoming the second sex in American higher education.In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences released Beyond Bias And Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, which found “pervasive unexamined gender bias� against women in academic science. Donna Shalala, a former Clinton administration cabinet secretary, chaired the committee that wrote the report. When she spoke at a congressional hearing in October 2007, she warned that strong measures would be needed to improve the “hostile climate� women face in university science. This “crisis,�...

Whoa … this isn’t a study that paints teachers in a positive light, but it doesn’t paint minority students in one either. We’re faced with some tough questions here. Do teachers prefer non-black students, or are black students more difficult for teachers on average? It should be noted that even black teachers are relocating, and it doesn’t completely focus on just black students. Other minorities are discussed as well as economic class.

Criminal offenders, teen moms, dropouts, runaways and other wayward youths will score summer jobs with federal stimulus cash as most Bay State kids desperately scramble to land coveted seasonal gigs in a tight economy. Requirements for summer jobs: • Lacking basic skills. • Pregnant or parenting. • School dropout. • Homeless or runaway. • Court-involved or an “offender.” • An English as a Second Language learner or an immigrant.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 One in five students dropped out of a California high school last year - about the same as the year before, state Superintendent Jack O'Connell announced Tuesday. The graduation rate also held at about 68 percent. The news that little had changed - despite O'Connell's calls for improvement and years of pointing to the moral imperative of helping failing students - prompted a round of criticism among advocates and critics of public education and from at least one candidate for the top school job. "We don't need another report to tell us that we are failing...

The Oakland school board has voted to change the name of a small school to Barack Obama Academy, reportedly the first middle school in the country to adopt the name of the nation's 44th president. While Obama has been in office fewer than 100 days, the 35 students at the former Alternative Learning Community public school persuaded the board Tuesday to make what they said was a historic change. -snip- The school, which opened in 2007, enrolls primarily African American and low-income students. Many of the students have had poor grades, lax attendance and suspensions in the past.

Ethnic minority pupils race ahead of poor white classmates in schools Immigrant pupils are overtaking many white children at school because their families place more value on education, a key Government adviser has said. By Julie Henry, Education Correspondent 01 Mar 2009 Ethnic minority pupils race ahead of poor white classmates in schools Rapid progress was being made by children from Chinese, Bengali and Indian backgrounds, while white working-class boys, in particular, were struggling, according to Sir Mike Tomlinson, the former head of Ofsted. In controversial comments which will raise questions about the focus of Government funding, Sir Mike said...

All work and no play may be a hazard for some U.S. school children. Researchers reported on Monday that a growing trend of curbing free time at school may lead to unruly classrooms and rob youngsters of needed exercise and an important chance to socialize. A look at more than 10,000 children aged 8 and 9 found better classroom behavior among those who had at least a 15-minute break during the school day compared to those who did not, Dr. Romina Barros and colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York reported. The behavior assessments were general...

The murder rate among black teenagers has climbed since 2000 even as murders by young whites have scarcely grown or declined in some places, according to a new report. The celebrated reduction in murder rates nationally has concealed a “worrisome divergence,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University who wrote the report, to be released Monday, with Marc L. Swatt. And there are signs, they said, that the racial gap will grow without countermeasures like restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths. The main racial difference involves juveniles ages 14...

A head teacher who suspended the equivalent of a quarter her pupils in one year has seen exam pass rates increase by 65 per cent. Caroline Haynes, 49, adopted a zero tolerance disciplinary approach to her secondary school pupils, convinced that by allowing disruptive students to remain in class was jeopardising the chances of others. She has handed out 478 suspensions in one year at a school with 1,880 pupils and seen GCSE pass rates shoot up. Mrs Hayes criticised the Government's policy of encouraging schools to reduce exclusions, which then reflects better on their Ofsted rating. She said: "Statistics...

WASHINGTON -- Your child is less likely to graduate from high school than you were, and most states are doing little to hold schools accountable, according to a study by a children's advocacy group. More than half the states have graduation goals that don't make schools get better, the Education Trust says in a report released Thursday. And dropout rates haven't budged: One in four kids is dropping out of high school. "The U.S. is stagnating while other industrialized countries are surpassing us," said Anna Habash, author of the report by Education Trust, which advocates on behalf of minority and...

If there's one thing you have to give Philadelphia's leaders credit for achieving, it's consistency. Under the "leadership" of every mayor and city council going back decades, the city has seen its population plummet, and with it, our prospects for growth and world-class status. Consider these gems: Between 2000 and 2007, Philadelphia lost 4.5 percent of its residents, the largest percentage drop of any Top 25 city. As far as actual numbers, the only city which lost more people in that span was New Orleans, and I think the Big Easy had a weather-related incident which prompted that city's mass...

If college students can take more than four years to graduate, why not high school students? State educators are considering a proposal to raise the number of years before graduation for some Michigan high school students. Under today's regulations, students count as "dropouts" in state records if they don't finish high school in four years -- even if they receive their diplomas within the next year. But that could soon change. "This is great news," said Mary Beth Handeyside, director at Omni Adult and Alternative Education, the alternative high school of Carrollton Public Schools. "It's not only in the interest...

A new statewide count of high school dropouts, based on the tracking of individual students, shows significantly higher numbers than have been reported for years in California. The dropout report, released Wednesday by the California Department of Education, estimated that one in four high school students - 24.2 percent - failed to graduate with their classes or move into another educational program to continue their high school education. The estimates were derived from data from the 2006-07 school year. By contrast, the state claimed a 13.9 percent four-year dropout rate for the prior year. The difference is due to a...

Deploying a long-promised tool to track high school dropouts, the state released numbers today showing that 1 in 4 California students quit school in the 2006-07 school year, including 1 in 3 in Los Angeles. The rates are considerably higher than previously acknowledged but lower than some independent estimates. The figures are based on a new statewide tracking system that relies on identification numbers that were issued to all California public school students beginning in fall 2006. The ID numbers allow the state Department of Education to track students who leave one school and enroll in another, even if it...

Per this whole is it schools or is it society debate, studies like this new one from Andrew Zau and Julian Betts (pdf) are pretty depressing. They show that it’s possible at a pretty early point in a child’s schooling experience to see what their trajectory is. The don’t blame the schools crowd would have a stronger case if, armed with this information, states and schools were seriously crafting interventions to get these kids back on track. But no. Instead, perversely, they often get the least.

Barack Obama took a "tough love" message to African American youth, telling that finishing high school is a better route to success in life than an unlikely trip to the NBA or the top of the rap industry. "You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Lil' Wayne, but probably not, in which case you need to stay in school," Obama, D-Ill., told a cheering crowd, brought to a standing ovation at a town hall meeting in Powder Springs, Georgia. The presumptive Democratic nominee was speaking about high school drop out rates and the need...

“It’s a lot later than we think. We’re raising an illiterate and uneducated generation, and there’s more to come. On April 1, America’s Promise Alliance released a detailed study revealing that fewer than half of the teenagers in 17 of the largest U.S. cities drop out of high school before they graduate—more than 1.2 million of them. The cost of this is enormous: billions of dollars in lost productivity for expensive social services and (because ignorance begets crime) to build more prisons. This report sounded like an April Fool’s joke on the growing number of fools, meaning all of us....

WASHINGTON - 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...

Three out of 10 US public school students do not graduate from high school, and major city school districts only graduate one out of two students, according to a study released Tuesday. In a report on graduation rates around the country, the EPE Research Center and the America Promise Alliance also showed that the high school graduation rate -- finishing 12 grades of school -- in big cities falls to as low as just 34.6 percent in Baltimore, Maryland, and barely over 40 percent for the troubled Ohio cities of Columbus and Cleveland. And it said that black and native...

WASHINGTON (April 1) - 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...

It's a working-class white concern, and a can't-miss issue for Obama. Richard Whitmire is president of the National Education Writers Association Barack Obama's advisers know that winning in Pennsylvania requires shrinking Hillary Clinton's wide lead among "Casey Democrats," working-class whites who were fond of their former Gov Robert Casey. The themes both Obama and Clinton aired out in Ohio to attract those voters, such as attacking NAFTA and decrying lapses in health-care coverage, undoubtedly will resurface in the coming weeks. But there's one more issue affecting these voters that the candidates haven't aired. And it's Hillary-proof. Anyone visiting the homes...

The full title of this book is--CLASS AND SCHOOLS: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform To Close The Black-White Achievement Gap by Richard Rothstein INTRODUCTION This book discusses the black-white achievement gap and how to eliminate it. Dr. Rothstein no longer believes schools are the answer; he has other remedies. While this book was published in 2004, it has the imprimatur of both Economic Policy Institute and the Teachers College of Columbia University. Such formal recognition suggests educators are changing their focus in respect to the genesis of both the black-white and social class achievement gaps. SUMMARY Professor Rothstein on...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday signed into law a five-year renewal of Head Start, the federal preschool program for poor children. The latest update to Head Start, which began in 1965, aims to open the program to more children and ensure that teachers are better-qualified. Congress overwhelmingly approved the legislation last month, and Bush signed it despite misgivings about aspects of the bill. Bush praised the bill's push to increase competition among Head Start providers, raise learning standards and coordinate early childhood education.

American Federation of Teachers president Edward J. McElroy today proposed extending the school year into the summer in order to provide intensive instruction and enriching out-of-classroom activities for the nation’s most vulnerable K-3 students.

The LA times has been running a series on education. This is the opening paragraph of their commentary: It's sad but true, as pretty much any parent can tell you, that white, middle-class schoolchildren are more likely to be taught by experienced, highly paid teachers. And it's particularly true in ethnically diverse districts such as L.A.'s. This is a predictable convergence, but one with dismaying implications for the "achievement gap" between white and Asian students and their black and Latino counterparts. Indeed, the achievement gap is at least in part the result of an "instruction gap," and closing it will...

WASHINGTON - It's a nickname no principal could be proud of: "Dropout Factory," a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high schools across America. "If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?" asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term "dropout factory." There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools...

Black boys 'need role models not rappers' By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent Last Updated: 2:13am BST 10/08/2007 Black youngsters need a new generation of role models, drawn from the legal profession, business and education, to counter under-achievement and involvement in crime, a Government-funded report has said. Uanu Seshmi: boys need self-confidence to reject gangs Too often the role models for young black men are celebrities and rappers who glamorise crime, guns or gangs, the independent Reach report said. It came as a charity boss claimed that Britain's inner cities were starting to resemble American ghettos and that a lack...

Last Updated: Friday, 22 June 2007, 10:25 GMT 11:25 UK Low attainers 'poor white boys' The researchers say some policy initiatives have lost their way Most of the persistent low achievers in England's schools are poor and white, and far more are boys than girls, a Joseph Rowntree Foundation study says. Chinese and Indian pupils are most successful. Afro-Caribbean pupils do no worse than white British from similar economic backgrounds, results suggest. The analysis, by London School of Economics academics, says that some policies are having positive effects. But others, such as school league tables, actually make things worse. The...

Boys Are In Trouble by: Wendy Cook, June 04, 2007 Since the 33-year-old Women’s Educational Equity Act’s inception, the U. S. Congress has appropriated around $10 million annually for research, curricula development and teaching strategies to promote “gender equity,” according to information from the U.S. Department of Education. But what about the boys, have they been left behind by our nation’s schools? “Boys are in trouble,” said Krista Kafer, visiting fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. “The facts are quite clear; boys trail girls in most indicators of academic excellence such as, school engagement, achievement scores, and graduation rates at...

A new report says the city's high schools graduate just 38.9 percent of their students, but New York officials, who claim the rate is closer to 53 percent, are disputing the methodology behind the lower figure. The study, released Tuesday by Education Week magazine, ranks the graduation rate of the nation's largest school system as the third lowest among the 50 biggest school districts in the country. Detroit fared the worst, with a rate of 21.7 percent, while Fairfax County, Va., was ranked the best, with 82.5 percent of students graduating. City Department of Education officials said Tuesday that the...

A framed college acceptance letter rests against a wall in the makeshift office of a small St. Louis middle school. The letter - from Southeast Missouri State University - means the world to the man at the desk, Loyola Academy President Kevin Lee. It represents the first of the private school's dozens of graduates to get into college. Seven years ago, Loyola Academy opened as an experiment. Now, with three similar schools here, it is part of a national movement helping urban children enter some of the region's selective private high schools, and from there, win admission to college. Loyola...

Urban gay youths finding their place Center helps as more teens come out Johnathan Lamarr Terry Jr. had concealed encounters with boys since the sixth grade. So when he started going to a local youth center that caters to gay boys and girls, the 18-year-old from Cleveland's Hough neighborhood told his tough-guy friends he was looking to beat people up. As he mingled with the people he promised to bash, he started shedding his "boy stuff." Then last summer, as the pressure of lying to his mother started to build, he told everyone he was gay. Some cousins were outraged....

We are reading Jonathan Kozol's "Savage Inequalities" in my sociology class. I’m smart enough to know the book isn’t objective. And so far, I’ve sought out independent information about him, including that he is big government, but against national testing. And that he is against vouchers. And that he thinks the solution to the problem is more $$$ in the schools. And from reading the book it’s so so clear that he is a race monger. I understand why there is very little work and money in terms of economics but is there anything else? I’m hesitant to blame the...

http://www.marvacollins.com/biography.html Marva Collins Biography Marva Collins grew up in Atmore, Alabama at a time when segregation was the rule. Black children were not permitted to use the public library, and her schools had few books. Nonetheless, her father, a successful businessman, instilled in her an awareness of the family's historical excellence and helped develop her strong desire for learning, achievement and independence. After graduating from Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, she taught school in Alabama for two years. She moved to Chicago and, later taught in Chicago's public school system for fourteen years. Her experiences in that system, coupled with...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The public schools in Norfolk, Va., which over the last seven years have steadily narrowed a wide gap between white and black students in reading and mathematics scores, have won this year's Broad Prize, a $500,000 award to the urban school district making the greatest strides in student achievement. The prize was announced on Tuesday at a ceremony at the Library of Congress by Eli Broad, the founder of the Broad Foundation, which is dedicated to improving urban school districts across the country. "In our circles this is really the Nobel Prize of education," Stephen C....

http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200509020711.asp September 02, 2005, 7:11 a.m. “Some Children Should Be Left Behind” Effective teaching. Rafe Esquith, who for 20 years has gotten amazing results teaching everything from algebra to Shakespeare to inner-city Los Angeles fifth graders, will make you rethink at least a few prejudices you may have had about education. Or at least, he made me do so. And that’s an achievement in itself. Because he’s a public-school teacher, I assumed he’d complain about underfunding. Nope. “We always had lots of cash; we didn’t always spend it wisely, but the money was there,” he writes in There Are No...

Judy Clayton's introduction to teaching came Wednesday, her first day back in middle school in nearly 25 years, when she asked her eighth-grade students to share their nicknames. One boy in baggy jeans told her his: Bug Boy. Clayton had been on her feet for more than six hours by then, and had used nearly all of the skills she had learned in a three-week crash course for new teachers. She flashed back to her earlier life, the one she abandoned in the spring when she submitted an online application to the Pinellas County School District for a quick-track teacher...

Too many American children are being raised by parents who have inherited a 1960s mindset -- the one that jettisoned important qualities such as discipline and faith -- and cast aside important institutions vital to this country's success and security. As a result, the ignorance and even the sins of the parents now are being visited upon children. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study determined that many children are exposed daily to over eight hours of TV, video games, computers and other media. A generation ago many parents set strict limits on TV viewing. Too few do that now. Moreover,...

/BLOCKQUOTE> "Dropout factories" is how a new Harvard study describes some California schools, finding that dropout rates for Latinos and black students are abysmal. Just 50.2 percent of black boys who entered ninth grade in the Golden State received a diploma four years later. The dropout problem on the whole has been underestimated, says The Civil Rights Project of Harvard University, which called for improvements to dropout rate calculation methods and more accountability over the high number of dropouts. The state has reported a graduation rate of 87 percent. Researchers using a different methodology found an overall graduation rate of...