While Forbes has extolled the virtues of living in Indiana in their August, 2007 list of most affordable housing markets, Indianapolis has found itself on another, not so wonderful, list: cities with the lowest high school graduation rates. Keeping Indianapolis company at the bottom of this list were Cleveland and Detroit:

In Detroit's public schools, only 24.9 percent of the students graduated from high school, while 30.5 percent graduated in Indianapolis Public Schools (emphasis added) and 34.1 percent received diplomas in the Cleveland Municipal City School District.

As if that weren't horrible enough, here's a nasty side note: in calculating the percentage of ninth graders who step out after completing grade 12 with their diploma, these schools, routinely, don't include dropouts in their calculations (which vary wildly in terms of formula or data included). Imagine how much worse No Child Left Behind would look if they did. Former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who is the founder of the America's Promise Alliance, said that "when more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school (1.2 million), it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe." I'll say.

Even more troubling, the suburban areas surrounding these cities showed a tendency to do much, much better than their urban counterparts.

Many metropolitan areas also showed a considerable gap in the graduation rates between their inner-city schools and the surrounding suburbs. Researchers found, for example, that 81.5 percent of the public school students in Baltimore's suburbs graduate, compared with 34.6 percent in the city schools.

In Ohio, nearly 83 percent of public high school students in suburban Columbus graduate while 78.1 percent in suburban Cleveland earn their diplomas, well above their local city schools.

What had me scratching my noggin, though, is the fact that Forbes also rated--you guessed it--Detroit and Cleveland among the most affordable cities as well. Think there's a connection?

What I don't think will work is to rob Peter to educate Paul (clever, no?). The suburban school children need to keep doing what they're doing and improve on it: when 80% of suburban school children graduate, 20% are being left behind. Urban schools need to improve parental involvement, teacher education, and community supports. The free market system needs to work here: teachers and schools that fail to deliver on their product need to go out of business just like everybody else who doesn't deliver.

Lalita Amos's blog | login or register to post comments