Posted on 12/09/2010 10:51:40 AM PST by Amerikan_Samurai
More than a third of California's African American public high school students dropped out before graduation day, a startling number and one that's on the rise, according to 2009 data released Tuesday.
The 37 percent African American dropout rate, up three percentage points from the prior year, was far above that of any other ethnic subgroup. Hispanic students had the second highest rate at 27 percent.
Locally, San Francisco cautiously celebrated a 9 percent overall dropout rate, a stark contrast to Oakland's 40 percent, numbers still under review for accuracy.
The statewide statistics highlight a pervasive achievement gap in test scores and graduation rates that persists despite focused efforts to boost the academic performance of black, Hispanic and low-income students, state education officials said.
Overall, 22 percent of state students dropped out of high school, according to the new data, up from 19 percent the year before.
The numbers are more than a year old. They were released several months later than usual because of problems ramping up a new system that can follow individual students' progress in California public schools, even if they move, said state schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell.
"We now have a data system that allows us to track students more accurately and have honest conversations about how to improve graduation rates and reduce dropouts among all subgroups of students," O'Connell said.
O'Connell blamed the increase on state budget cuts, which have resulted in larger class sizes, fewer art and music classes, cuts to sports, fewer counselors and less access to career/technical courses - all programs that can help keep struggling or at-risk students in school.
In addition, drastic cuts to summer school have prevented students from catching up on credits during the break, meaning they can't graduate on time and too often give up.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
“O’Connell blamed the increase on state budget cuts, which have resulted in larger class sizes, fewer art and music classes, cuts to sports, fewer counselors and less access to career/technical courses”
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Without question, more money will solve the problem. Just consider the Wash. D.C. schools.
Excuse number 2,320,365,236,000,000,000,000 as to why. According to liberalism, Marxism, multiculturalism and whatever other ism it is NEVER blacks themselves that are the why. It is ALWAYS someone(read whites)or something(read poverty, liberalism, one parent homes etc etc) that is at fault.
We as a nation are obviously hellbent on destruction. We will continue down the national path of destruction as long as we embrace the mantra of egalitarianism.
The socialist Democrat party has been SOOOOOOOO good to black people. No wonder 95% of blacks vote for the people who’s policies cause a 40% black student drop out rate.
Bravo! Hooray! Encore!
Keep voting for Democrats, you African American voters. Keep up the good work and enjoy your reward.
The war on poverty is so failed, it is a freaking joke. Cut people off welfare and assistance, give them an incentive to work, and watch them thrive. The welfare and assistance and coddling has done nothing but to enslave people a 2nd time.
Bravo, commie Dems! You are doing a wonderful job!
It's a reasonably accurate and honest depiction of the kind of dysfunctionality endemic to the welfare culture in inner city ghettos with the exception that it does not really highlight the organic mental problems created by several generations of fetal alcohol/fetal methamphetamine/fetal crack cocaine use by ghetto mothers.
No amount of money/counselors/smaller class sizes are going to address these problems.
Anyone who has tried to spoon feed even the most basic scholastic skills to fetal substance abuse children with hyperactivity and motor skill deficits is going to have problems with art and conventional music education. Ever notice how most of the ghetto rap groups don't play musical instruments - they just rap to canned or ripped off music.
There are fewer and fewer seriously talented black musicians like Stevie Wonder coming out of the ghetto after 3-4 generations of welfare entitlement “Living Just Enough For The City”
No way are going to solve these problems with funding or programs. They are what caused the problems n the first place. What is need is a fundamental cultural and lifestyle change that gets the underclass to buy into basic American middle class values, standards and goals. Don't hold your breath for this to happen in today's PC culture
Excellent reminder that there is way more to this than just greedy youngsters being lazy and goofing off. That is a big part of it, but the environment that inner city students face today is brutal.
I see no way to combat it without being very forceful with a tough-love sort of approach. Just end all handouts straight up, expel any students that are unruly, and enforce military-strict discipline on the rest. The entire inner-city population is on the verge of being hopelessly lost and a light touch is not going to get it done.
They are probably doomed but only a massive and dramatic shift in attitude toward inner-city schools will do anything.
“I cry for the spiral that liberals have taken my beautiful country down.”
####
The meritocracy that was once America:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvWHnK2FiCk
We literally have several generations of welfare/ghetto culture who are fundamentally unable and unwilling to live independent functional lives in todays world.
They lack even the basic desire/ability to show up for a job on a daily basis, much less do anything productive.
I came up the hard way and though I'd try to give something back to society and try to change the world. After a few years of frustration, heartbreak and tears (literally) I figured out that that particular world did not want to be changed, least of all by me. What it did want was the rest of society to fund and support it's dysfunctional lifestyle.
Sad, but true.
Schools resemble prisons now. Why stop with mere school? Why not send all resistent teens to real government prison camps? /s
I have two questions.
1) Given the realities of the bell curve, what should be the reasonable percentage of people capable of graduating from high school? If everyone could graduate and do the work needed to graduate then the standards would be sooooo low that the diploma would have no value whatsoever.
For a high school diploma to have any value approximately 30 to 40% of the population should be utterly incapable of doing the work needed to acquire it. Perhaps this 30 to 40% of the population would be far better off leaving school at the age of 13 or 14 and going to work or moving into some sort of apprenticeship.
2) Why are you assuming that any education takes place in any institutional school? Where is the evidence? Where are the scientific studies that **prove** learning happens there? I have asked educators many times for links to these studies and no one has ever provided me with the studies.
I owned, and was the doctor in, a busy health clinic. Over my career I had the opportunity to know many parents and their kids. I observed that parents of academically successful homeschoolers and institutionally schooled children both reported **exactly the same** home study habits and home environments. So?...How much learning is happening in any institutional school? How much is **entirely** due to the efforts of the child ( on his own) and the parents in the **home**?
Where is the evidence that proves schools are doing little more (or less) than merely sending home a curriculum for the parents and child to follow in the home?
Before condemning thousands upon thousands of young adults to school prison, maybe we should **know** the answers to the above questions.
But...Even more important are the constitutional and human rights questions of sentencing young adults ( who have committed no crime) to government school prison.
Yes, I do.
We obviously need more rap and hip hop “artists.” Now, that’s something that will carry blacks forward. (Wha’s the bitches and hoes?) And what’s with the loud audio systems that wake up my ninety year old mom from a block away? These bastards literally rattle her house. The new credo of black youth - “vexo. ergo sum!” - I annoy, therefore I am.
30-40% should be incapable of achieving a HS Diploma?
You asked a question then answered it.
The parents interest is the key.
Hopefully, to your satisfaction.
I got something a little different from the book.
As I read it, we are subsidizing stupid people to make more stupid people, which lowers the average IQ of the group. Your typical welfare queen is not going to be a rocket scientist, and her "baby daddy" is not going to be a brain surgeon.
Those whose progeny are likely to raise the average IQ of the group - two parent families supporting themselves - are less likely to have the number of kids the subsidized group has.
What can we do with a culture that is not only programmed, but determined to fail? Contrast that with the Asians. I once was friends with a young man that emigrated from Vietnam; he did not speak English when he arrived. Yet, within three years he had learned English well, graduated from a computer programming school, and had landed a job at a major Fortune 500 company. Since then, I don’t listen to sob stories about being disadvantaged.
Yes, he applied himself.Good for him. The Montagnards did the fighting for us and the dying. The Viets did the whining. Look up STMP.
My sister's niece 'graduated' from HS in Sacramento. I tried to converse with her in English a few times. She couldn't even speak a full sentence or thought, much less write it down. Her great accomplishments in the math area amounted to being able to put her contacts on speed dial.
Very sad and that is pretty heart braking when you swear you will make a difference and you can’t. You had an entire culture against you. It is very difficult to change a culture dynamically. You can’t exert external pressure on a culture. Cultures just evolve when conditions change. We need to change the conditions that will change the culture.
I don’t know how to do that. We can take away welfare and make people more desperate to motivat them, but how do we repair the nuclear family that has been destroyed. That has me stumped.
I really feel sorry for Ghetto people. They didn’t ask to be there. I wouldn’t want to have to face those odds. At the same time, it makes me mad and frustrated that they generally surrender to it without even trying to get out and work.
Brutal. I’m stumped at a solution but whatever it is, it needs all of society to help. As long as the Dems want to simply buy off the ghetto people with trinkets to keep them enslaved, nothing is going to change.
I thought it would be higher. I’m thinking they are claiming more students to get federal money instead of admitting that more have dropped out.
Ahhh I get ya. Misunderstood your first post. Heck you are probably right. Lol
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