“It’s time for a national ‘call to arms,’ because we cannot afford to let nearly one-third of our kids fail.”
Among large cities, Detroit had the lowest graduation rate at 24.9 percent, followed by Indianapolis and Cleveland at 30 percent and 34 percent, respectively. Seventeen cities, including Atlanta, Denver, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, had graduation rates below 50 percent, says the report Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytic report on High School Graduation.
Editorial Projects in Education Research Center developed the report using the Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI), which sets the rate based on the number of incoming ninth graders in a district who graduate within four years.
For example, 592,000 9th graders in large cities began ninth grade in fall 2003, the study noted. But only 306,000, or 52 percent, graduated on time with the class of 2007. As a result, the study noted, “graduating from high school in America’s largest cities amounts, essentially, to a coin toss.”
See “Low Graduation Rates In U.S. Cities”
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