Who Benefits from Dropout Factories?

Dropout factories are the norm in most large cities with a significant number of black students. Specifically, a dropout factory is a high school where graduation is not the norm. Nearly half of the nation’s Black students attend such schools whereas only 11% of white students attend high schools where graduation is not the norm.

On May 22, the mayoral appointed school board in Chicago made the final decision to close 49 schools. The parents were not at the table when the decisions were made and it is their children who are affected – not the mayor’s children, not the school board members' children, not the CPS (Chicago Public Schools) CEO’s children, nor the union president’s children. More about this in an upcoming post.

This was essentially political decision because the evidence shows that most of the schools that the children will be transferred to are no better than the ones being closed. The CEO of CPS even told the parents to not expect any immediate improvement in the academic performance of their children after the transfer. Furthermore, when the children leave these elementary school, the high schools they will be going to are the dropout factories. Neither the union nor the politicians are concerned about the quality of education for the Black children who are being forced to either attend these schools or dropout.

But then who benefits from dropout factories.

Keep in mind that the unions exist to make sure that the teachers have a job, make good salaries, have an excellent health care plan, and have a retirement plan that is significantly better than what we taxpayers have.

Here’s an example from Chicago. The budget for the Chicago public schools is $5.11 billion. The average spending per pupil is $13,078. The average teacher salary is $74,839. Teachers average a 3 to 5% increase for the first 13 years of service and can get an average of 3.8% pay after earning an advanced degree.

These are the benefits the people get who teach in the dropout factories. Here are the results of their so-called work:

• Over the past 30 years roughly half of the students fail to graduate.
• The average ACT scores in this district dropped by 0.1% in 2011.
• In  2011, fewer than 24% of CPS graduates were prepared to attend a four-year college and only 1 in 7 tested college ready.
• 39 % of  CPS teachers send their children to private schools.
• And finally, in a recent study tracking CPS students who graduated between 1998 and 1999, only 35% of the student who went to college earned their degree within 6 years, below the national average of 64%.

The dropout factories should not be allowed to exist. This is what this site is all about -- ending these dropout factories. 



What do you think about dropout factories? Leave your comments below.