Posted on 04/14/2008 6:50:39 AM PDT by Reaganesque
Recently, Collin Powell's new group, America's Promise Alliance, issued a report (the link to it is at the bottom center of their home page.) from the EPE Research Center listing the large cities in this country which had the worst graduation rates. Shockingly, many of our biggest cities have graduation rates of less than 50% with the worst, Detroit, graduating only 25% of it's high schoolers.
Given the perception that most cities are liberal leaning at best, I decided to see if there was any correlation between a city's liberalism and the results from this graduation rate study. Yes, I am a Conservative and am therefore had an ulterior motive however, the resulting numbers I found were sufficiently lopsided that, to me anyway, they would seem to be indicative of a possible correlation. I make no claim that this is the most scientific study ever but at the very least, I believe, it merits further consideration.
The worst 20 graduation rates, on the list are as follows:
1. Detroit, MI...24.9%
2. Indianapolis, IN...30.5
3. Cleveland, OH...34.1
4. Baltimore, MD...34.6
5. Columbus, OH...40.9
6. Minneapolis, MN...43.7
7. Dallas, TX...44.4
8. New York, NY....45.2
9. Los Angeles, CA...45.3
10. Oakland, CA...45.6
11. Kansas City, KS...45.7
12. Atlanta, GA...46.0
13. Milwaukee, WI...46.1
14. Denver, CO...46.3
15. Oklahoma City, OK...47.5
16. Miami, FL...49.0
17. Philadelphia, PA...49.6
18. Jacksonville, FL...50.2
19. Tulsa, OK...50.6
20. Chicago, IL...51.5
In 2005, a research group in San Fransisco, The Bay Area Center For Voting Research, ranked the nations cities from most to least Liberal. (For a complete list click here.) The list is 236 cities long and runs from most Liberal to least Liberal. For the sake of comparison, I divided the list into three groups of 79 cities; the three representing the most Liberal, "Moderate" and least Liberal. The top twenty Liberal cities, according to this list are:
1. Detroit, Michigan
2. Gary, Indiana
3. Berkeley, California
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Oakland, California
6. Inglewood, California
7. Newark, New Jersey
8. Cambridge, Massachusetts
9. San Francisco, California
10. Flint, Michigan
11. Cleveland, Ohio
12. Hartford, Connecticut
13. Paterson, New Jersey
14. Baltimore, Maryland
15. New Haven, Connecticut
16. Seattle, Washington
17. Chicago, Illinois
18. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
19. Birmingham, Alabama
20. St. Louis, Missouri
The first and most obvious similarity between the two lists is that Detroit is number one on both lists. Detroit has been considered a "Liberal" city since the early 1930s. Baltimore has been run by Liberals since 1967. Indeed, most of the cities on the "Most Liberal List" have been run by Liberals for the last 30-40 years or more.
Looking deeper into the comparison, I found that of the 20 worst cities for graduation rates, 70% of them (14 out of 20) are identified on the "Most Liberal Cities List" as Liberal. Of the remaining six cities, four fell into the "Moderate" category and the other four were considered "Least Liberal."
With all this said, it cannot be said that Liberalism is the sole, determining factor in these poor graduation rates in big cities. However, given the disproportionate representation of Liberal cities on this list, it would at least appear to be a contributing one. At the very least, more study should be done regarding this possible link. Surely the children of our biggest cities and their parents deserve to know if this is the case.
Please correct the headline. It should read 70% not 75%.
I’m not surprised... modern liberalism just doesn’t hold up to statistical scrutiny. I ran a similar analysis of state minimum wages compared to home ownership and joblessness. The higher a state’s minimum wage, the less likely its people are to have a job or own their own home.
no surprise, liberals expect someone else to take care of them, since they cant make it on their own.
their mentatlity is, hey, I’m here, and the its up to the gov’t to make it all better for me.
I look at that list and immediately get a mental picture of incompetent, corrupt, old-line Democratic party machine mayors and city councils - the kind that fixate on what brand of copy payer is purchased but who claim they can’t see the violence and squalor around them.
payer = paper (bad typing day!)
We should be running ads stating these facts.
Can we raise enough money? If not, why not?
“Move On”, the liberal group runs ads all the time, if they can raise the money, so can we.
The problem is obvious - public school teachers are underpaid.
These people aren't really "liberal" in the correct sense of the word. They are part of the Proletariat and, as such, have no ideology. They simply want "something for nothing" and will vote for whichever politicial is most likely to deliver. Their beliefs are rooted only in nothing more or less than greed and jealousy. Their greed is a desire for anything that they haven't earned but was earned by someone else. Their jealousy is rooted in the belief that someone out there just might be getting more than they are. From birth, they are trained to be something far less than self actualizing humans who can stand on their own two feet. They offer not a scintilla of moral and spiritual muscle to the nation and they pass this failing on to their "get" many times over.
There are so many other cities too that could be added to the liberal list. The conservative city list is so short. I wonder why liberals don’t win 80 percent of elections as they are so numerous. People are looking for “easy street” though liberalism.
Not moral in any human sense, but they are PC.
Yes, and their numbers are absolutely legion!
Anyone want to step up and try to present a current social problem that CAN’T be traced to a “liberal” policy?
This is a challenge, I bet no one can do it.
I can probably handle most of the refutations, I’ll have several other FReepers helping me shoot down any proposed answer to this challenge, right?
So come on, FReepers, let’s put your liberal asshats on and TRY!
Once a city turns liberals, it remains liberal. That is what Khrushchev thought about communism: once communist, always communist.
I think (perhaps) a better correlation is that cities that are run by liberals produce a dependent class that feel there is no need to be educated. Just sit there on the couch and wait for the check to come.
I seriously doubt the people who aren’t graduating even know what liberal means. They just go vote for Dems because that is what they are told to do by their parents. Gotta keep voting dem and punching babies out so the checks keep coming.
ping
Public education in these cities should be considered a form of child-abuse.
Golllly I am so proud to be from Indianapolis. Maybe if we try we can make number one by next year. There was an article in the local paper on Sunday that pretty much explains how we attained our lofty position. Graft, corruption, incompetence, no oversight and no one takes responsibility for anything. As one long time employee was quoted as saying after the new super made comments about new policies he was instituting, “this too will pass, just like all the others before.”
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