One Dropout Every 26 Seconds Is
Ticking Time Bomb for Blacks
By Lawrence C. Ross
04/06/2011
Between the trials and tribulations of the controversial
No Child Left Behind law, the growing issue of bullying
in schools, and the feeling that parents, teachers and
administrators are all searching for a magic solution to
the problem that is the American educational system,
here comes more bad news.
Recently, President Barack Obama's education secretary Arne Duncan
stated that every 26 seconds, a student drops out of
high school. But things are even worse for black
students; a whopping 40 percent of African-American
students don't graduate from high school. These dismal
statistics are creating an underclass of
African-Americans who have become unemployable, while
also affecting the very fibers of the black family
structure.
Marc Williams, a high school music theory teacher at Cesar Chavez
Charter School in Washington DC, also works with the
school's retention program. He sees a number of
different causes for black students not finishing high
school.
"Our (African-American) students are dropping out of school for a
number of reasons. Aside from the cookie-cutter answers
that most folks give that speak to the lack of support
from within the household, the fact that many of our
students don't have a 'set' of parents, and the obvious
idea that many urban schools lack the fiscal resources
that other schools have, there are some other things to
consider here," Williams said.
"We, as educators, are failing our students," he added.
"Independent and charter schools (in particular), in
order to meet budgets, are spending less money for
newer, inexperienced teachers that come fresh off the
stage of graduation and into a situation that is a
culture shock for them... It's a set up for failure."
When you dig deeper, you find that black boys in particular are in
a crisis mode. According to the Massachusetts-based
Schott Foundation on Public Education, more than half --
53 percent -- of black male students drop out of high
school without a diploma, compared to 22 percent of
white males.
And the problem even extends to elementary school, in one of the
best charter school programs in the country. A new study
by researchers at Western Michigan reports that 40
percent of 6th to 8th grade black boys in the Knowledge
Is Power Program charter schools (KIPP) drop out before
completing the program.
It is already tough for high school graduates to compete
economically with college graduates, with college
graduates earning around $297,893 dollars more than a
high school graduate during a lifetime. But without a
high school diploma or a General Educational Development
(GED), a student basically condemns themselves to
underclass status. Individuals without a GED or high
school diploma loses about $7,000 dollars per year in
comparison to someone with a GED.
And in a modern military, where the ability to understand high tech
systems is a premium, dropping out of high school and
getting into the military is proving to be an obstacle.
Even those with high school degrees are finding it
difficult. Thirty nine percent of black applicants with
a high school degree are rejected by the military. And
those who do make it in are coming into the military
with lower scores than white applicants, therefore
putting them at a disadvantage when it comes to future
advancement.
The real societal cost of a high drop out rate at the high school
level is that it attacks the structure of the black
family. Black high school drop outs feed a growing black
underclass of economically disadvantaged families,
making it more difficult to break the cycle of poverty.
The state of New York is finding that having a GED helps
prevent homelessness, and has created Back to School
program in order to get individuals to complete their
GED.
But the effects are also found in the college ranks. With black
boys struggling to finish high school and go to college,
some college systems are finding that when they exclude
for college athletes, black male students are a scare
commodity. In South Carolina, for example, only 3
percent of the student body at the University of South
Carolina, Clemson and the College of Charleston, are
black male students. This means that there's a
infinitesimal pool of eligible college educated black
women looking for a relationships with men with similar
educational backgrounds.
The high school drop out epidemic among
African-Americans is not a ticking time bomb, it's a
tsunami that's swamping the future of black America.
State Farm Insurance is working with America's Promise,
the educational organization founded by former Secretary
of State General Colin Powell, to fight high school drop
outs through a new program called 26 seconds. But unless
there are major changes to the current educational
trends, look for the nation's prisons to continue to be
repositories for the black students left behind, as they
grow more desperate to survive without educational
skills.
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