Thread: 1 in 4 drops out of high school, but some cities improve

1 in 4 drops out of high school, but some cities improve

By Libby Quaid, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The high school dropout problem is getting better in some big cities where it's most severe, a national study found, but the overall situation remains dismal, as more than one in four kids drops out of high school nationwide.
Still, Philadelphia, Tucson, and Kansas City, Mo., made huge gains over the past decade, boosting graduation rates by 20 percentage points or more, the study found.

In all, 13 cities saw double-digit improvement in their graduation rates, according to the study released Wednesday by America's Promise Alliance.

"I was surprised at the size of the gains in some of these cities," said Christopher Swanson, director of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which prepared the report.

"The majority of these large cities are making improvements, and that's something you wouldn't necessarily get if you've been listening to this debate recently," Swanson said.

Chicago, which saw its graduation rate rise more than 9 percentage points, tried an array of ideas, including new smaller schools and ninth-grade academies.

Until January, Chicago public schools had been run for the past seven years by Arne Duncan, who is now President Barack Obama's education secretary. Obama has said he wants to fix the problem of high school dropouts.

Duncan said Wednesday there is little doubt about how to fix the problem.

"I think we know many of the answers, yes, we do," Duncan told The Associated Press following a speech in Washington.

"There are places around the country where those numbers are going down, and not just going down one year, they're going down year after year after year," he said.

"In places that are struggling, there has to be a willingness to face those brutal truths and not be scared of them and acknowledge this huge sense of crisis, the devastating impact this has on children's lives and on the entire community," Duncan said.

Urban schools still have a long way to go. On average, only half the kids graduate in the 50 biggest cities, the report said. Those cities are home to half the country's population and are driving a national graduation rate that is estimated at 70%.

And while most big cities are making gains, 19 have lost ground. Las Vegas saw its graduation rates plummet 23 percentage points to 44.5%. The graduation rate in Wichita, dropped 18 percentage points to 54.5%, and in Omaha, it dropped 15 percentage points to 50%.

The report measures progress from 1995 to 2005, the most recent year for which comprehensive data was available from the Education Department.

For kids who don't finish high school, the future is bleak. High school dropouts are the only segment of the work force for whom income levels shrank over the past 30 years, the report said.

Only in recent years have people begun to realize how widespread and severe the dropout crisis is, said Bob Balfanz, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Balfanz has worked with America's Promise Alliance, a children's advocacy group started by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, but did not work on this report.

"Paying attention matters," Balfanz said. "If there's a problem, and we react to it, at least in some cases, we'll make it better."

Since then, Philadelphia and other cities have worked on finding ways to intervene, especially when kids are most vulnerable, in ninth grade when they start high school.

Some districts have created ninth-grade academies that offer smaller classes and help catching up in math or other subjects to ease the transition into high school.

Districts also have developed smaller schools and focused on helping kids with other problems — homelessness, a sick relative they take care of — to keep kids from dropping out.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

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John Doe 2 (24 friends, send message) wrote: 7m ago

If they give amnesty to the MILLIONS of ILLEGAL aliens in this country

do the dropouts get the jobs that those Americans won't do ?

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Not a complete analysis just a few observations..............

Teaching in Urban schools is very difficult because the students are out of control at an early age, the teachers are told not to report discipline problems to the office, and if by chance the kid’s parents are called in, the parents are often worse than the kids/students behaviorally and emotionally.

It makes me laugh when I hear people like stupid Oprah Winphrey talk about all the technology and things that the Urban schools don't get.........Oprah doesn't understand that most of the kids in Urban schools will steal and sell anything that is not nailed down. They ruin anything nice they are given. Some even steal bathroom appliances to sell for drugs later in the day, if the hall monitors and guards don’t carefully patrol.

Teachers that want to give the kids the best quality of education become frustrated and often leave teaching when they realize that they are not teachers, they are baby sitters.

Most teachers have to spend the majority of their time with discipline with little time ileft over to complete full lesson plans.

And too, many of the illegals children don’t speak English and they frequently are quite disruptive and bring down the behavioral and intellectual level of the entire class, because they require so much extra attention. The respect for learning, teachers and education is almost non-existent. I can see why kids drop out of high school.

I’m surprised that high school is not done in a distant learning format in English and Spanish.

Distant learning would be nice, so many kids cannot afford computers. And if mom can finally buy one, there will be no control that the kid is actually studying or looking at porn sites. There are too many latchkey kids who come home, goof off and go hang out on the street.
These kids haven't had any parental control, and in the majority of cases, it is because it is a single mom probably with a bunch of kids that is doing her best to put food on the table.
What gave me hope for a new focus for some of these kids, was last week at the hair clippers. A boy about 10 years old told the woman he wanted an Obama cut. And as I listened to what they were talking about, this little guy wants to be as good or better than Obama, and one day he wanted to be president.