Jay Greene, Black Alliance for Educational Options and the Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute, November 2001
This week, the Black Alliance for Educational Options and the Manhattan Institute's Center for Civic Innovation released a new study by Jay P. Greene that examines the surprisingly complex issue of high school graduation rates. Surprising and sobering, too. Greene disputes the federal estimate of an overall 86% graduation rate (as it includes GEDs and relies on dubious analytic methods) and concludes from his own analysis that the U.S. high school graduation rate in 1998 was just 74%, including 78% of whites and a deeply troubling 56% and 54% among black and Latino youngsters respectively. These rates turn out to vary hugely by state (consider 93% in Iowa, 57% in Georgia) and by city (87% in Fairfax County, Virginia, 43% in Milwaukee, 28% in Cleveland). Though state and municipal differences are clearly influenced by the racial composition of their student bodies, that doesn't tell the whole story. For example, 85% of Boston's African-American students graduate, compared with 34% in Louisville. Other factors must also be at work. While graduation rates alone are not a satisfactory gauge of educational performance - it's possible to pump them up by making it easier to graduate - from a young person's standpoint it matters hugely throughout life whether he/she has a high-school diploma. As Greene says, "The graduation rates reported in this study...convey strongly that far fewer students are graduating high school than we may have believed and far fewer than we would wish." You can get a copy most expeditiously by surfing to http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_baeo.htm.
