Posted on 04/01/2008 12:06:48 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
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 diploma and about 1.2 million students drop out annually.
"When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe," said former Secretary of State Colin Powell, founding chair of the alliance.
His wife, Alma Powell, the chair of the alliance, said students need to graduate with skills that will help them in higher education and beyond. "We must invest in the whole child, and that means finding solutions that involve the family, the school and the community." The Powell's organization was beginning a national campaign to cut high school dropout rates.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.aol.com ...
I was a dropout myself but I suspect the graduation rate at my school was close to 90% or more back in the 80s.
They always talk like these are just sad, sweet kids who lose hope because their schools are not meeting their needs. Fact is, a vast number of drop-outs are the type that, in the old days, were kicked out. Kicked out for violence, for drugs, for disrupting class... by and large, these are the kids you don’t want sitting next to your daughter, or lying in wait for your son in the boys’ room.
Mr. Thomas - Your assignment for tonight is to correlate dropout rates with (a) demographics, (b) percentage of single-parent families, (c) violent crime rate. Please report back tomorrow.
child - Boston - 11 years old - hospitalized after being pushed down the stairs by a child who is older and a well-known bully
child 1 has internal injuries, facial cuts, and a broken arm
Hmm. What do all of these cities have in common?
Hint: it aint illegal aliens, who at least have the excuse of not speaking the language.
Graduation tests. Rather than bother with the tests, many kids are ‘dropping out’ getting a GED and going to work.
A lot of kids are taking AP tests, which grant college credit (don't go there, I know) and are dropping out, getting a GED and going to college when they would be seniors in high school.
Oh, and a lot drop out for all the other reasons (drugs, booze, hooking, bored to death, etc)
The bottom line is that over 5% of our kids don't finish school every year.
Our high school offered a three year graduation option. I’m surprised more kids didn’t take it...
If I was to guess I would say that most of these large cities have been under the control of the Democrat party for years, most likely since the 60’s or 70’s. And yet every 2 to 4 years the people in these cities go to the polls and pull the lever for the same Democrats.
And then they wonder why things either stay the same or get worse.
And yet we have no problem importing millions of high school dropouts from Latin America through our legal immigration policies and allow millions more to enter illegally. It matters not whether the high dropout comes from Detroit or Nogales. Such hypocrisy.
Liberal Cities + NEA + ACLU + Liberal Parents + Liberal Judges + Liberal Juries + Entitlement Mentality = “Were you expecting something other than dropouts?”
“In Detroit’s public schools, 24.9 percent of the students graduated from high school...”
This can’t possibly be true. What a joke.
The illegal Mexicans were coming into British Columbia from eastern Washington state in droves when I lived in that area. Hard as it is to believe, the farmers in BC used to import Sikhs from India to do farm labor!
I wish Mr. Powell and his organization much luck.
Peer pressure has more of an effect on teenagers than parents and community. The first thing that needs to be addressed is the reality that inner-city school kids are scorned by their peers as acting white if they study and take an interest in school.
Liberal utopia fails, again. Kids get screwed because of failing liberal ideologies, again.
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