This week, a stress test of urban vs. suburban education was given, and the results, in many cases, are alarming.
Currently, the national city/suburban gap is 18 percentage points. Cleveland has the worst stats of all: only 38% of city students graduate, while 80% of suburban students obtain a diploma. (I’m shaking my head at this atrocity.)
The report, funded by America’s Promise Alliance, a non-profit that used US Census statistics for their study, was overdue because many states, for decades now, have been generating falsified graduation statistics, leaving the truth buried. High schools were reporting GED diplomas as graduates, over estimating rates, and erroneous information gathering. Again, my head shakes. The Department of Education staff has even been drawn in on the charges.
On a brighter note, many schools saw marked improvements since last year’s report was made public. Philadelphia, PA and Tuscon, AZ were among the two top cities that saw the greatest strides made: both raised their scores by 23%. Portland, OR and New York City, NY brought their scores up by 13%.
As a New York City Teaching Fellow, I will see first hand what the Big Apple calls urban education. This fall, I will be in the classroom in a city that houses 8.2 million people, taking an educational pulse to report back here. Teaching biology in the Bronx, where the graduation rate is at less than 53% (versus the suburban rates of 83%) I look forward to understanding the big picture. The NYC Teaching Fellows has been credited with largely improving these statistics in New York City. One of the ways that the suburban/urban gap can be alleviated is by putting better teachers in the classrooms in the larger cities and by making the pay grade more equivalent to a suburban rate.
I’m sure its not a surprise that a gap between city and suburb exists, but should a gap like Cleveland exist in the United States, where our cities aren’t exactly suffering like those in, lets say, Guatemala or India? Here, in our own cities, one in three US high school students will drop out of high school without ever obtaining a diploma. It is estimated that nearly 1.2 million children will drop out of school PER YEAR. Minorities will suffer the most with over 50% of all African American and Hispanic students not completing high school on time or at all. And in today’s world, the bare minimum is not enough, so high school must be completed to even have a stable ground to stand upon.
Check here for your city’s stats:
The entire Cities in Crisis 2009: Closing the Graduation Gap report can be found here:
http://www.americaspromise.org
I often had pangs of guilt when teaching in my “inner city” classroom(s). There I was teaching junior high Spec Ed (ED) students, lucky if I got one or two in class reading on a third grade level. And yet I continued to espouse the virtues of education. How many would realize that the “Certificate of Attendance” they’d receive upon graduation was not a HS diploma? How many would care? How many jobs were awaiting them even with a real HS diploma? How many would go on to college? How many could even afford to dream of college? Was I just another cog in the wheel of selling useless, fallacious hopes and dreams? Or was I really one of the biggest offenders? What glimmer of hope did I offer to the students who didn’t survive to return from summer break?
I never answered any of those.