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The 10 Worst Dropout Cities
Bad schools translate into high dropout rates. And those rates lead to depressed lifelong incomes. The Daily Beast crunches the numbers to determine the 10 cities that have lowest-percentages of high-school graduates. Plus, read more on Giving Beast, our new philanthropy site.
Fifteen percent of American high schools, known as “dropout factories,” produce more than half of American dropouts. Research shows these schools are clustered in California, the Southwest, and the Old South. Now a new Census analysis by The Daily Beast demonstrates that regions with poor schools are lifelong magnets for high-school dropouts, and suffer from stagnant economies and rock-bottom salaries.
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Four metropolitan areas in California rank among the highest in the country for high-school dropouts, according to our analysis of the 2008 Census data. Bakersfield, California, has the most high-school dropouts in the country for metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 people. Roughly 16 percent of the Bakersfield population over 18 does not have a high-school diploma. Using the same population threshold, the Bakersfield area also ranked fifth lowest in the nation for median individual annual earnings, with $24,228 earned yearly by workers there.
“Unfortunately, those areas are struggling in terms of every possible indicator that has to do with kids and poverty and education,” says Ellen Winn, director of the Education Equality Project. High-school students who drop out this year will miss out on about $335 billion in wages during their lives, according to an August report from the Alliance for Excellent Education, a secondary-education advocacy organization. And dropouts tend also to be more adversely affected by economic declines. The national unemployment rate for high-school dropouts was 15 percent in September 2009, compared to 4.9 percent for people with higher education degrees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Plus, Alma Powell on why the dropout problem matters.
Clark Merrefield is a reporter, researcher and writer based in New York.
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Greatest country in the world? Not when it comes to education. Major problem? American's are terrified of taxes even if it's an investment in our future.
You can't keep cutting taxes and have a productive, prosperous society - it's illogical. We accept crumbling schools and yet freak out when a tax hike is mentioned and vote for incompetent politicians as long as they promise "tax cuts." Then wonder in amazement about high crime, welfare and how we got so far behind other nations in research and technology, yet scream about outsourcing low paying jobs.
We all know that children will contribute to the tax base and our future. Therefore, in addition to improving our middle and high schools, college education should be paid for by the government to eliminate the burden that makes good students work part time or go into crushing debt or try to get athletic scholarships. How many more would stay in school and go on to college? \It's in our national interest and security to have an educated populace who are more interested in their futures than those of celebrities or reality shows.
The US is the greatest country in the world, especially when it comes to education (e.g., Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, etc.). The paucity of educated individuals in 2009 is not due to any single factor, but to a multitude of reasons, primary among which is the continued erosion of parenting skills, which is where all learning begins. Spending per pupil is outrageously high given the result and spending more will not change the outcome, just the price-tag.
Your response could not have been more perfect. Spending more money will not make these kids go to school if the parents don't care. My son spent one year in the public school system in a district with an under performing school. Principal's of under performing schools here need to submit a proposal to the school board outlining their steps to correct it. When the principal held a meeting at night to go review that proposal with the parents six people showed up. Yes, SIX PEOPLE cared enough to show up and find out what the principal was going to do to fix the school. We pulled my son at the end of the year and subjected ourselves to the "Voluntary Education Tax" (aka, private school tuition)
Maybe for these cities, but I know for certain the Barton Report, and from calls for help from school districts that some districts have as high as 54% drop out rates.
In Los Angeles, we should be able to refer the drop out rates back to the cities all these abandoned and runaway kids come from.
Many of us have been begging for decades for better help and better standards for our kids and teachers, that does not mean more tests.
I visited a progam yesterday that has almost a 100% graduate for very high risk kids.
There is no excuse for the numbers of kids not being educated, not just tested and passed along, or dropped or forced out.
One young woman at the program talked about being in eighth grade and not even knowing enough to pass a 4th grade test, she just stopped going and started hanging out with others in the same drop out boat, and got in trouble, and luckily into the program that helped her, and educated her.
There are ways to address these problems, and not all are expensive, but we are too busy being tested, and silly and not doing what works............
Lack of success in school is overwhelmingly linked to the absence of a father in the home.
Read it at the WASHINTON POST (The Parent Gap)
Patrick Welsh, English teacher:
"Why don't you guys study like the kids from Africa?"
In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class of 12th-graders who had done horribly on a test I had just given. A kid who seldom came to class -- and was constantly distracting other students when he did -- shot back: "It's because they have fathers who kick their butts and make them study."
Another student angrily challenged me: "You ask the class, just ask how many of us have our fathers living with us." When I did, not one hand went up.
I was stunned. These were good kids; I had grown attached to them over the school year. It hit me that these students, at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, understood what I knew too well: The lack of a father in their lives had undermined their education.
Thank you.
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