Thread: 50% dropout rate in LA

On the news last night, LA has a dropout rate of 50%, but hey....go ahead and skip school to run through the streets and protest against a country that allows you to sit in that school for a chance to learn........hmmmmm somethings a muk over there eh?


http://www.civilrightsproject.harvard.e ... pout05.php


Press Release

New Research Exposes Hidden High School Drop Out Crisis; Acute Among California’s African-American And Latino Students

Los Angeles, Oakland Districts Graduate Less than Half of Incoming Freshmen; Some Schools Beating the Odds and Graduating High Percentage of Low Income, African-American and Latino Students

Economic Implications and Solutions to Dropout Crisis to be Discussed at LA Conference: “Dropouts in California: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis”

Los Angles, CA--March 23, 2005 — A previously hidden crisis of high school dropouts in California was revealed today by researchers convening for The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University’s conference “Dropouts in California: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis.” The shocking new data reveal that high school graduation rates in California are much worse than reported by the state, and are alarmingly low for African-American and Latino students.

According to research to be presented at the March 24 conference, California’s overall graduation rate is approximately 71 percent––16 percentage points lower than the official rate of 87 percent. The graduation rates for African-American and Latino students are even lower, 60 percent for Latino students and 56.6 percent for African-Americans.

“Large urban school districts in California have become ‘dropout factories,’” said Gary Orfield, Director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and author of the new book Dropouts In America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis. The economic and social impacts of this dropout crisis are too enormous for Californians to ignore. The State must make schools accountable for graduating their students and provide resources to help students whose careers would be wrecked by leaving school.”

New research by the Urban Institute showed that California’s largest school districts have some of the worst on-time graduation rates. Specifically:

Los Angeles and Oakland Unified School Districts graduate less than half of their incoming freshmen on time.
Six of the state’s largest ten school districts graduate less than half of their Latino students: Los Angeles, San Diego, Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento City and San Bernardino City.

Xianleather,

Make sure to include links to your articles.

Link inserted, sorry, It's early and It slipped the old grey matter...LOL

Back in the late 80's I was friends with a guy named Al Melton who was principal of Zavala Elementary school in Austin. Al is white and didn't get a principalship until he changed his name to Alejandro Mindez Melton so he'd appear hispanic. Al was one of these fading, ex-hippie leftists jerks that I eventuallly cut off all contact with, but during the time I knew him I learned some very interesting things.

Zavala is a majority latino school, even back before the illegal invasion took place, and Al told me that truancy was there biggest problem. Every morning Al would have to drive all over the East side, dragging kids out of the clutches of their parents who didn't want them in school. Not all the parents were this way of course, but many were, and I had never even heard of such a thing at that time. Al also told me stories of parents being drunk by 8 in the morning, and all the parental chaos that implied.

Zavala was dead last academically in Austin year in, year out, but to his credit, when Al got the principalship he eventually managed to get the school's scores up.

The media went nuts! The Statesman had story after story about the success of Zavala students, how their grades had skyrocketed, you know, the whole 9 yards. By this time I'd seen things in my friend Al that I thought were disgusting and evil and had cut off contact with him, but one day out of the blue he called me. Al said he was going to be on Good Morning America because of his success in getting the student's grades higher.

Well I noticed after all this hoopla that nobody was saying how high the students grades had climbed, so I asked two teacher friends who worked there. The average GPA there was barely 70. I, being so young and stupid at the time, had thought I'd hear that these Zavala kids were getting 80's and 90's, maybe even acing exams, given all the hysteria in the press.

Later, in the 90's, "Alejandro" was arrested for supplying drugs to and molesting a teen-aged student at his school and is now in prison, thank God.

That is to say the least an intersting article. Makes you wonder what is going to happen to all of those people after they drop out?

So taxpayers have to fund $10-15,000 per kid for 15 years and they get to just quit?

One more thing wrong with this country.

I pay $2400 in property tax for a 1947 condo that is rundown. Most 85% of those taxes goes to kids who can quit school and run the streets . I don';t have any kids.

I am afraid that kids of all races are spoiled and indulged, drive cars, roam the malls and streets, and DON'T GO TO SCHOOL. They sure don't work. The all feel entitled, have no discipline, and contribute nothing.

I am new to this board, and before this month, I could not have ever pictured myself taking this position. I grew up in Northern California and have always thought of Mexican immigrants as hard working people exploited by our system. I became a teacher and got all of the extra training to help English learners. The problem, in my experience, hardly any of these kids seem to want to learn English, and they don't seem to want my help either. Most of the time I feel like I am just babysitting them. I actually think a lot of them resent me for trying to help. Once I tried really hard to get some Mexican girls to work with other students who were willing to help the, and all three of these girls literally turned their backs to the other students and chatted to eachother throughout the lesson. When I saw tons of people marching in the streets waving Mexican flags, it just totally boiled my blood. Is there anyone like me who is just waking up to this unpleasant reality about illegals? I could really use a moral boost right now!

biogrl just check out the threads on these boards. There are new members everyday, people just like you that have the same feelings just like you and are fighting this invasion just like you. We are all here for the same reason to protect our country and our rights as american citizens.

biogrl
Welcome to ALIPAC.
You are not alone we are getting new people every day who are learning what is happening to our country.

Thanks for bringing info to my attention. Posted a link to the Harvard study on OJJPAC too.