WASHINGTON, D.C.
With only half of minority students graduating high school on time, U.S. secondary schools need more funding, rigor and accountability to address the “silent epidemic” of school dropouts, national and community activists said at a special Washington, D.C., conference Wednesday.
Organized by MTV, the National Governors Association, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others, this “national summit” sought answers to a dropout dilemma that prevents many African-American, Hispanic and American Indian students from ever accessing higher education. While policymakers offered plans to improve a lackluster track record, it was a group of students and community activists who provided stark pictures of the problem.
“I’m sick and tired of being ‘sick and tired,’” said Alberto Retana, an inner-city Los Angeles community organizer. He called the urban dropout problem a “loud and disastrous social dynamic” that primarily is “about class and about race.”
Retana said he organized Los Angeles students and parents to push for more rigorous courses. In some high-poverty schools, there were far more courses in cosmetology than chemistry, he noted. Through his organization, Community Coalition of South Los Angeles, Retana promoted universal access to college prep classes. “The main voices missing [in school improvement] are students, parents and the community,” he said.
Among students nationwide, about one-third do not graduate with their classes, organizers said. But the higher, 50 percent rate among minority students is particularly troubling because of demographic trends and the concentration of these dropouts in poor inner-city neighborhoods. Overall, 15 percent of the nation’s high schools – primarily in urban areas – produce half of all dropouts.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings bluntly presented similar facts in her summit appearance. “In too many of our cities, the reality faced by minority and low-income kids is shocking,” she said, labeling many inner-city high schools as “dropout factories.
