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Crisis
in the Classroom
A
Message from the Editor, Victoria L. Valentine...
Fall
is almost here and students are returning to class
and hitting the books. School buses are back on the
roads and teens are gathering once again in small cliques
in and around their high schools. Throughout the nation,
it is time to go back to school.
But for many students,
something goes wrong once the school year begins.
According to a recent
report, "Every year, across the country, a dangerously
high percentage of students - disproportionately poor
and minority - disappear from the educational pipeline
before graduating from high school."
Nationally only about
68 percent of students who enter ninth grade graduate
four years later with a regular diploma. According to
a May report by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard
University and the Washington, D.C.-based Urban Institute,
the graduation rate for White students is 75 percent,
while only about half of Black, Latino and Native American
students graduate on time.
High school graduation
rates are even worse for minority males and for students
in the South, where the majority of the Black population
(55 percent) resides.
"Confronting the Graduation
Rate Crisis in the South," shows that the overall
graduation rate for Blacks in the 16 Southern states
and the District of Columbia is 55.3 percent. For Black
males that rate is just 47.4 percent. "Yet, because
of misleading and inaccurate reporting of dropout and
graduation rates, and an exclusive preoccupation with
testing data, the public remains largely unaware of
this educational and civil rights crisis,"the report
states.
The problem, the study's researchers
contend, is that school districts overestimate graduation
rates. For example, when enrolled students stop attending
school, they are usually counted not as dropouts, but
as transfers, although there is no paperwork to confirm
this assumption. Also, some states include students
who earn GEDs, or General Education Diplomas, in their
calculation of students who receive regular diplomas.
In addition to adversely affecting
the quality of life of individual dropouts, poor graduation
rates carry great economic and community costs. The
U.S. Census Bureau estimates that students who fail
to graduate from high school will earn $270,000 less
over their working lifetime, than students who earn
their high school diplomas. In recent years this gap
in earnings potential has widened. In 1975 dropouts
earned 90 percent of what high school graduates made;
by 1999 high school dropouts were only earning 70 percent
as much as their counterparts.
High school dropouts are also
three times as likely to go to prison. According to
the report, "economists estimate that a 1 percent
increase in high school graduation rates would save
the nation as much as $1.4 billion each year in crime-related
costs."
And yet, poor graduation rates
do not rank on the nation's education agenda.
In this issue, we address two
pressing school matters. First, we provide a progress
report on the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The federal
law primarily focuses on testing, requiring all students
to achieve proficiency in math and reading by 2014.
NCLB goals are comparatively lax when it comes to students
dropping out of high school.
Also in this issue, we examine
the role parents must play in the academic achievement
of their children. In "Parental Guidance,"
we report on the importance of mothers and fathers being
involved in their children's education. If parents want
their children to succeed, they need to keep track of
what is going on in the school, be aware of how their
child is doing academically and make sure that student
learning occurs in many aspects of the child's life,
not just in the classroom.
If states and the U.S. Department
of Education won't make high school graduation a national
priority, at least parents should.
Letters
to the editor may be sent to
The Crisis
7600 Georgia Avenue, NW
Suite 405
Washington, DC 20012 or
thecrisiseditorial@naacpnet.org
* Letters may be edited for length or clarity.
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