Bad Public Schools, Dropouts, and What to do About It

The high school graduation rate in Chicago as of the last full year of available records. (2012-2013) supposedly 63%, which is far from the national rate of 81 %.

However, according to an investigation done by National Public Radio (NPR), the news might not be quite as sunny and cheerful as the headlines would indicate. Graduating more students isn't really a positive accomplishment if the graduates in question are making it out the door on a technicality and are not prepared for either college or a job. And in Chicago, that seems to be the case far too often.

First of all, the "percentage who graduate" isn't accurate if you mislabel a lot of the dropouts.

Basically, we found that many high schools in the city were mislabeling students when they left. They were saying they were moving out of town or going to private schools when, in reality, they were enrolling at the district's alternative schools or, in some cases, GED programs. This makes it look better than it really is because mislabeling those students makes them disappear from the denominator.

But even the ones who stick around and graduate were frequently getting credit for work which was dubious to say the least. Many students achieved the required minimums through "credit recovery." This process allowed students who failed required courses to "retake" the class at home and/or online with limited teacher supervision and far fewer questions to answer.

Plenty of cities are apparently using similar tactics to Chicago. Camden, New Jersey has an interesting optional program for kids who fail their finals. They get to try again with a substantially easier course.

In New Jersey, if you fail the first-round high school exit exam, there's a second exam you can take — an easier one. It's untimed, and it consists of just one single question per subject. In Camden, half the senior class failed not just the first test but the second one too.

In New Jersey as in many states with grad exams, there's a Plan B. There's an appeals

process. And students can submit samples of work they did in class to the state. It can be a single, graded algebra problem or a persuasive essay with a teacher's comments on it.

That "Plan B" was apparently used by nearly 1,500 students in New Jersey alone. Good work if you can get it, as the saying goes, but are these students in any way ready to succeed in either academia or the work force? It doesn't sound like it.

Illinois Policy says that even that story doesn't tell the whole tale when it comes to Chicago.

Unfortunately, these requirements are not rigorous. In fact, students can fail one of four core classes (English, mathematics, science and social sciences) each year and still advance to the next grade level. They also only have to garner just a D in each class they take to earn the 24 credit hours they need to graduate.

        

It's important to remember what a graduation rate doesn't tell us — namely, how prepared the graduating students are for college. On that front, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) are failing miserably.

According to a recent report, 45 percent of CPS graduates begin their senior year not doing well enough academically to attend a four-year college. In the fall after graduation, the most common outcome for these students was to be neither working nor in school.

NPR also showed the opposite side of the coin when they explored the state with the highest graduation rate in the country, Iowa at 90%. There they talk about a number of programs which Iowa has used to keep kids in the classrooms, including free day care, food banks, smaller classes and flexible hours. Those all sound great, and if the districts can manage the funding there's plenty to like about them. 

But at the same time, nothing is ever going to replace a solid home life and parents who make sure that their kids get out of bed in the morning; make sure they make it to school; check on their progress regularly; and, help them with their lessons and discipline them when needed. Maybe there is simply more of that in Iowa?

That would be nearly impossible metric to quantify, but I wouldn't be at all surprised. Government can provide education as a form of supplied services, but they can't force it on anyone. That happens from the bottom up. And for too many kids in Chicago and many other large cities, that's clearly not happening. The sad result is that a lot of those children will never really stand a chance later in life.

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The Need for Equality in Education Still Exist

Now, even after the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board and the first time students of color became the majority in U.S. public schools - the state of education in Black America today is at a critical juncture. 
The achievement gap between Black children and their classmates continues to widen, and too many students are simply not being equipped with the tools that they need to succeed in a rapidly changing, global society.

Why? Because in areas where Black children are concentrated and poverty is pervasive, we are falling short of providing a high-quality education for them.

Of the 50.2 million students enrolled in public schools in the U.S. today, 16 percent are Black. While our national graduation rate is at 82 percent, the graduation rate for Black students is 57 percent. Those who do reach that graduation milestone are not as prepared as their classmates for learning beyond high school. 

Racial and Socioeconomic Achievement Gap
Upon entering college, only 12 percent of Black students are ready to succeed without taking remediation courses (basic skills courses) that can be so costly they lessen the odds of some students attaining a degree. These are sobering statistics. But if we want to close the racial and socioeconomic achievement gap, we must have a clear understanding of its exact dimensions and contours. 

Tools for Realizing High Standards
Not only do we need to be able to describe the problem, we need to also use our understanding to build tools that meet the challenge of educating all children to high standards. What are those tools?

In K-12 education, the emphasize needs to include the following: access to great teachers who deliver high-quality instruction; high expectations and challenging coursework; and approaches to personalized learning that allow a more tailored approach for students so we can meet their individual learning needs and build on their strengths.

The Single Most Important Quality of a Great School
The recent New Education Majority national poll of parents and families of color suggests that parents agree. It showed that Black parents overwhelmingly consider good teachers to be the single most important quality of a great school, and that they their young-sters should be challenged more in school to help ensure they are successful later in life.

Today, more than ever before, education doesn't end with high school. A post secondary degree or credentials offers the surest course to career opportunity and individual success in life. We need to make college more personalized and flexible to meet the needs of today's students, who are more diverse than ever. Many are working full-time, while others are raising kids or returning to school at an older age.

Why Some Students Drop Out

Georgia State University, for example, analyzed millions of student to try to learn why some students were dropping out. They found that a low grade in the first course in a student's major can signal trouble. The university gets an alert when students earn a C or lower in the first course tied to their major - and students get more support. It's one of the data-driven steps that helped Georgia State double the graduation rate for Black students and triple the rate for Hispanic students over the last decade.

Georgia State University, among other institutions, is facing the issue of educational inequity head-on and proving that it is not intractable or inevitable. The real question is, do we accept it in our country? Are we going to accept a system that sets students on different trajectories based on the color of their skin or the language they speak? Can we sit comfortably knowing that future leaders and great minds are sitting in classrooms today and not receiving the quality education they deserve?

Absolutely not. We cannot accept the status quo. It is time to look closely at approaches suggested by the data, listen to families and commit to implementing real solutions in our schools and communities.

Throughout history, Black people have always prioritized and fought for educational opportunities. Since the time when slaves learned to read and write despite the threat of physical danger that could result, through the battle for equality in our schools and Brown v. Board, the fight for opportunity through education, no matter the risks, is a part of our nation's story.

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Integration Hurts Black kids

Let's be truthful, if the American majority wanted integrated  schools, we would already have them. 

Instead, many white families select schools in ways that create social  distance between their children and other races. This leaves people of color who love our children to wonder how long we can chase them and continue to further the insulting delusion that Black student achievement can only be had in proximity to whiteness. 

Personally, I had the experience, in the 1950's of attending all Black elementary schools where there were no white teachers nor principals and acquired an outstanding elementary school education which allowed me to enroll in one of the two best high schools in the city. I simply made the mistake of leaving that school, enrolling in another high school, and afterwards dropping out during my junior year and not finishing high school until after being discharged from the military. 

No Evidence for Integration
Most black parents are realists. There is no evidence that perfect integration will occur soon, but our kids need an education today. With this in mind, it is unnerving to see integration fundamentalists criticizing policies aimed at educating our kids where they are. To them, reforms that assist marginalized communities are a consolation prize for our failure to achieve an idealized picture of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream community. To us, they're an imperfect but ultimately useful pathway helping us to navigate our kids through  a racist society.

What if the supposed beneficiaries of public school integration aren't actually pining for it? There is a long  line of Black intellectual thought that questions the primacy of integration as an educational goal and as a  means of cultural health for Black children.

Thoughts of Great Black Leaders on Education
W.E.B. Dubois said: "The Negro needs neither segregated schools nor mixed schools. What he needs is  Education. What he must remember is that there is no magic, either in mixed schools or in segregated  schools. A mixed school with poor and unsympathetic teachers, with hostile public opinion, and no teaching of truth concerning Black folk, is bad."

King himself expressed reservations about integration, too. Black educators from his church recall him  saying of white schools and white teachers: "People with such a low view of the Black race cannot be given free rein and put in charge of the intellectual care and development of our boys and girls."  Kenneth Clark, the famed psychologist whose scientific evidence about the deleterious effects of  discrimination bolstered Brown v. Board of Education, expressed disappointment with its aftermath.

Years later he conceded that civil rights leaders may have underestimated institutional racism, writing a paper for the Harvard Educational Review that called for "realistic, aggressive, and viable competitors" for the  traditional public schools. His vision is not significantly different from today's school reform efforts. Research continues to tell us Black children mostly attend public schools where they are more likely to be suspended than white students and are less likely to be placed in gifted classes even when they qualify.

Black Schools Get the Worst Teachers

Traditional school districts crowd the least effective, least prepared and lowest-paid teachers in schools with the most low-income Black children and just as King feared, those teachers hold low opinions of their students' potential. Taken together, you can see why Black parents are the fastest-growing demographic of  home-schoolers, and when culturally affirming charter schools open up, waiting lists quickly develop.

Given all the evidence, the safest things Black parents is to support new schools that get results. The  fundamentalists can work on persuading the American majority to close the gap between what they say about integration and what they do when it's time to enroll their children in schools.

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