Low Graduation Rates: Oprah Gets All A’s on Education Report
America’s schools are in crisis.
Just 20 years ago America’s elementary and high schools were rated #1 in the world in literacy, mathematics and science. Today we do not even rate in the top 20. In fact America rates 24th among industrialized nations and the gap is widening. Expert Charles J. Sykes, (not featured on the show), commented: “By virtually every measure of achievement, American students lag far behind their counterparts in both Asia and Europe, especially in math and science.”
Oprah and her guests did a fantastic job of shedding light on the problems, delving into a detailed overview of disturbing conditions in several U.S. cities, presenting commentary from students, parents, teachers, administrators and concerned citizens. Even submitting several avenues by which to address the problems.
Here are the hard numbers from the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research:
High School Graduation Rates in the United States
REVISED APRIL 2002
Jay P. Greene, Ph. D.
Senior Fellow, The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
Research Associate, with a foreword by Kaleem Caire,
President and CEO, Black Alliance for Educational Options.
(Prepared for the Black Alliance for Educational Options.)
�· The national graduation rate for the class of 1998 was 71%. For white students the rate was 78%, while it was 56% for African-American students and 54% for Latino students.
�· Georgia had the lowest overall graduation rate in the nation with 54% of students graduating, followed by Nevada, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
�· Iowa had the highest overall graduation rate with 93%, followed by North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.
�· Wisconsin had the lowest graduation rate among African-American students with 40%, followed by Minnesota, Georgia, and Tennessee. Georgia had the lowest graduation rate among Latino students with 32%, followed by Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Less than 50% of African-American students graduated in seven states and less than 50% of Latino students graduated in eight states for which data were available.
�· The highest rate of graduation among African-American students was 71% in West Virginia, followed by Massachusetts, Arkansas, and New Jersey. The highest rate of graduation among Latino students was 82% in Montana, followed by Louisiana, Maryland, and Hawaii.
�· Among the fifty largest school districts in the country, Cleveland City had the lowest overall graduation rate with 28%, followed by Memphis, Milwaukee, and Columbus.
�· Fairfax County, VA had the highest overall graduation rate among the districts with 87%, followed by Montgomery County, MD, Albuquerque and Boston.
Ã?· Cleveland City had the lowest graduation rate among African-American students with 29%, followed by Milwaukee, Memphis, and Gwinett County, Georgia. Cleveland City also had the lowest graduation rate among Latino students, followed by Georgia’s Dekalb, Gwinnett, and Cobb counties. Less than 50% of African-American students graduated in fifteen of forty-five districts for which there was sufficient data, and less than 50% of Latino students graduated in twenty-one of thirty-six districts for which there was sufficient data.
Ã?· The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) finds a national high school completion rate of 86% for the class of 1998. The discrepancy between the NCES’ finding and this report’s finding of a 71% rate is largely caused by NCES’ counting of General Educational Development (GED) graduates and others with alternative credentials as high school graduates, and by its reliance on a methodology that is likely to undercount dropouts.
Our schools are not only deteriorating academically. On Monday’s show the deplorable structural conditions in schools and classrooms across the nation were revealed on film. Leaking ceilings. Pealing paint. Crumbling plaster. Non-working plumbing and lavatories. Broken windows. On Tuesday, LA schools were shown to look more like overcrowded prisons with barbed wire and barred windows. There have been no new schools built in Black and Latino areas in Los Angeles in 60 years. 50,000 Los Angeles seniors did not pass the graduation exam.
Neighborhoods lying outside of the hot zones need not feel shielded. The outrage and frustration does boil over into other communities. This will affect not only these kids, but, everybody in the United States for years to come.
Microsoft owner Bill Gates assessed American schools as ‘totally obsolete’. As 2006 operations functioning at 1956 standards. He has spent $1 billion dollars of his own money to help fix the problem and direly warns: “We have to fix it nowâÂ?¦”
Kevin Johnson, former star point guard of the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns franchise, describes himself as a product of the Sacramento, California Public Education system, but goes on to say that his school did not help him succeed and that if it were not for sports that he would in all likelihood be like many of his former classmatesâÂ?¦ burdened down with the combined weight of no high school diploma, children out of wedlock, a drug habit and a criminal record. A plight the show revealed that high school dropouts are 8 times more likely to experience.
Making it a point to survey depressed neighborhoods on out of town game excursions, Mr. Johnson described witnessing the same disheartening conditions in all the NBA cities he visited during his tenure with the NBA. He felt so strongly about addressing the problem, he retired early from the NBA and founded the Saint Hope Academy in Academy in Sacramento. Saint Hope Academy offers tutoring and after school programs that encourage kids to stay in school, improve their grades, graduate and stay out of trouble. Not stopping there he successfully submitted a proposal to the Sacramento Public School Board to actually take over all operations at his former high school and has since improved its dropout rate of more than 50% to almost 100% college prep.
An amazing spin off is that the neighborhood surrounding the school was also transformed from a haven for prostitution, drug peddling and dilapidated properties into a first-rate enterprise zone featuring such high profile commercial entities as Starbucks. That’s right! Quality education has economically transformed the entire neighborhood. What is perhaps even more remarkable is the speed of the revival.
Participants in the show, students, parents, teachers, administrators and concerned citizens, repeatedly emphasized how one of the root causes for the situation is ‘low expectation’. Many students, who displayed tremendous ability in improved scholastic environments, recalled how their former schools drilled failure into their minds by structure, verbal denunciations or both.
The show demonstrated in several instances where students, including previously severely failing students, rose to the demands of higher expectations. Some in less than one school day!
The KIP program, (KIP is an acronym for Knowledge Is Power), implements the concept of making learning (extremely) fun. It sets facts and information to music. (While watching I wondered if I had seen something similar to this being used in a school in Africa.) Originators and advocates of the KIP method assert KIP ‘motivates and educates to the highest possible level’. The proof: The one School using the KIP method in the nation’s capitol is ‘excelling all other Jr. highs in D.C. area.’
There are 46 KIP schools around the country. Why are they not everywhere? Many school systems are too embroiled in the ongoing blame game to introduce any effective resolutions at this time. (I myself wonder how effectively the KIP method would perform in a high school setting. I am kind of surprised it works in Jr. High.)
Either way, the serious need for Adults to unite was also highlighted. Founders of KIP say when kids are given 101 reasons for failure, we need to counter with 101 reasons for success. KIP teachers make themselves available 24/7. Kids are signed up right in the home, so the very first meeting between student, parent and teacher takes place in the home. The KIP kids featured on the program wore school uniforms bearing the motto: “Be NiceâÂ?¦ Work Hard.” These kids are taught to look out for each other. The typical teasing stops and kids feel more confident asking probing questionsâÂ?¦
In California, Sonny Scwartz has set up the San Francisco county jail’s first ever high school behind bars. As mentioned above, high school dropouts are 8 times more likely to end up in jail . The state of California spends $10 thousand dollars per student. The state of California spends $34 to $75 thousand dollars per inmate. Statistics revealed that 74% of inmates in the San Francisco county jail come from only four area high schools . Most of them demonstrate only a 3rd to 8th grade reading level. 90% are parents.
Studies reveal that educating inmates is a protection to potential victims. Absent that education, the 600,000 inmates leaving jail each year are only learning how to be a better [and more dangerous] criminals.
How did we get to this place in the first place? It is not a moot question. Nor is it a one-dimensional problem. However, we do need to know what is at the heart of this decay so that not only do we solve the problem in the form of curing the visible symptoms, but do so in an adaptive way, structure in an immunity system such that when new problems arise, the system is designed to automatically detect any downward drift and make the needed adjustments without months and years of further fruitless analysis, debate and quarrelling.
The following is an excerpt is taken from the book, Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why America’s Children Feel Good About Themselves but Can’t Read, Write, or Add by Charles J. Sykes.
“Part of the reason is that neither our schools nor our students spend very much time at it. The National Education Commission on Time and Learning found that most American students spend less than half their day actually studying academic subjects. The commission’s two-year study found that American students spent only about 41 percent of the school day on basic academics. Their schedules jammed with course work in self-esteem, personal safety, AIDS education, family life, consumer training, driver’s ed, holistic health, and gym, the typical American high school student spends only 1,460 hours on subjects like math, science, and history during their four years in high schools. Meanwhile, their counterparts in Japan will spend 3,170 hours on basic subjects, students in France will spend 3,280 on academics, while students in Germany will spend 3,528 hours studying such subjects – nearly three times the hours devoted in American schools.
By some estimates, teachers in Japan give elementary students three times as much homework as American children are given by their teachers, while teachers in Taipei give their students seven times as much homework as children in Minneapolis. By fifth grade, children in Minneapolis are getting slightly more than four hours a week in homework, while fifth graders in Japan get six hours and students in Taipei, thirteen hours.”
Bill and Melinda Gates say divide giant schools into separate smaller schools and introduce more rigorous, relevant curriculum. Make nurturing relationships with adults at the school a priority. One young girl who was flourishing in this new environment commented: “There is not enough room to fall through the cracksâÂ?¦” at her school.
There were many proposals and models presented. Smaller schools seem the most practical overall solution I think. (But I did wonder how the NBA, NFL and Big Budget College Athletics would react to what amounts to their publicly subsidized scouting and farm system evaporating before their eyes?)
Truly believing in his assessment of the American HS being obsolete, Bill Gates has built, staffed and populated a state-of-the-art school of the future in southern California. Coined High Tech High in San Diego,not only is there is no football team, no band, no cheerleadersâÂ?¦ there are no books! The entire educational process is all hands-on and computerized. And don’t think that the curriculum or the student body is limited to computer aficionados. Sure enough, there are robotics and programming classes, but there are also state-of-the-art biology labs and classrooms. There is no tuition. Students are selected by a lottery system.
The program concluded with the announcement that the remarkable Mr. Kevin Johnson has elevated his campaign to a national platform by accepting the position as Spokesman for the Gates backed STAND UP. ORG. an internet site devoted entirely to the problem of bringing our schools up to 21st century standards and beyond. His main agenda? To demand that American high schools graduate kids ready for college, ready for work and ready for whatever they may encounter beyond their 12-year education and to mobilize parents, principals, politicians, actors and athletes to join in the fight. Maybe after he’s done he can scale down and take on a little easier jobâÂ?¦ like President of the United States. (I’m all for it.)
Thanks Oprah. Keep airing shows like these and your reign as queen of the screen will continue to be long and prosperous one. Can’t wait for the ‘follow-up’ show on this one!
*(On Stand Up dot Org there is a ticker that counts down every 26 seconds. Every 26 seconds our school system fails another child and he or she drops off our scholastic radar. On Tuesday, April 12, 2006 at 5:17 pm CST the count was 735,375 and counting.)
