Face up to hard truth at schools
Detroit Free Press Editorial
July 9, 2007

If you could take a class photo of the 1.2 million young people who drop out of high school in this country each year, one detail would be obvious -- and troubling.

Students of color, usually poor, dominate. It's true in Detroit, where one recent report estimates that city schools graduate only 24.9 % of students who start 9th grade, and shows up in every major study of the dropout population. Failure to complete high school is an epidemic problem among poor minorities, the population that's most in need of education to escape poverty.

So it's encouraging to see many of the nation's leading civil rights groups band together -- belatedly, given how long this has been a problem -- to make educational inequity a more urgent agenda item for state and federal policymakers. The groups behind the Campaign for High School Equity include giants such as the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, the National Indian Education Association and the National Urban League, each with solid track records of improving opportunities for minorities.

Working in conjunction with the Alliance for Excellent Education, this new super group should have clout and data to command the attention of the political leaders and the community groups, parents and children who have first-hand knowledge of the costs of this crisis.

Nationally, minority students are four times as likely to be enrolled in one of the 2,000 high schools that have been identified as producing approximately half of the nation's dropouts, according to the Campaign's report, "A Plan for Success."

Anyone daring to dismiss this fact as just another minority problem isn't paying enough attention to the population trends. The minority students who are either dropping out of school or getting a grossly inequitable education are also the growing segments of the U.S. population.

Finding ways to keep them in school now and ensuring they get proper skills is a sounder solution than paying for their education deficits later.

Copyright © 2007 Detroit Free Press Inc.