According to a study conducted by Achieve, Inc. and the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, the most severe dropout problem exists, where nearly half of the schools graduate less than 50% of their freshman class, is concentrated in 35 of our nation’s largest cities.
The cities are:
- Indianapolis
- Detroit
- Cleveland
- San Antonio
- Baltimore
- Fort Worth
- Dallas
- Houston
- Chicago
- Philadelphia
- New York City
- Austin
- Columbus, OH
- Milwaukee
- Denver
- Kansas City
- Nashville
- Memphis
- El Paso
- Oklahoma City
- Portland, OR
- Los Angeles
- San Francisco
- Boston
- San Diego
- Washington, DC
- Long Beach, CA
- Phoenix
- San Jose, CA
- Seattle
- Tucson
- Virginia Beach
- New Orleans
- Jacksonville, FL
- Charlotte
Several critical questions I believe need to be asked:
What do these cities have in common other than the fact that there are many of the students living in poverty and many of these students are minorities?
Can anything be gained by studying the fact that 2 of these cities are in Ohio, 6 in Texas, 2 in Arizona, 2 in Tennessee and 5 in California?
Does the fact that many of these cities are in states which border Latin America play a part in their names being on the list?
How much does state spending on education contribute to the problem?
How much of a role does the fact that many of these states are agricultural play in their names being on the list?
Till next time,
Franklin