It’s Good News …But
According to a recent report issued by the non- profit
organization ,America’s Promise Alliance, the high school graduation rate in
the United States has exceeded 80%.
Based
in information gleaned from the US Department of Education, four out of five
students in America’s public high schools
are graduating. A portion of this success is being attributed to the impact of
No Child Left Behind and the Race to the Top programs which imposed new higher
standards on school districts nationwide where funding was linked to a school’s
performance.
Unfortunately all of the news is not positive. The success
rate figures for minority student were significantly lower than for the nation
in general. According to the report, 76% of Latino student and 68% of African-
American students graduated during the same period. So for all of the bluster
and rhetoric about the success of these two programs, two of the targeted minority
groups are still being left behind. Throwing money and changing the paradigms of
American public education don’t always produce the desired result. A new and
innovative program (since there have been so many in public schools) is bound
to produce some successes. The answer is
that there is no one system that will produce universal success and certain
environmental factors will have to be addressed before these success rates can
improve even further. That is not to mitigate this success, but we need to be reminded
that it is only a step in a continuing ladder to raise the quality of education
for ALL of America’s school children.
c. 2014 J. Margolis
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