So lately I've been ruminating about whether my D is up to the challenge of the "rigor" of attending Duke. While I am increasingly impressed with her ability to juggle her extracurriculars without any helicoptering, it seems that as long as she does enough to keep her "top student" spot, she'd just as soon put academics on the back burner. So I'm checking out African American graduation rates, feeling okay but not great about Dukes numbers, and ended up looking at the following statistics.
Duke 6 year overrall 93.4 AA female 91.6 AA male 81.4 gap -10.2
but wait...check out the 4 year
Duke 4 year overall 86.9 AA female 88.4 (> overall!) AA male 57.6 gap -30.8 (!!!)
The Education Trust - Closing the Achievement Gap
The bad news is, four year graduation rates for AA's supports my fears that AA's may have more of a struggle ( does this reflect SAT scores? ). The good news is that if you seperate AA girls from boys, the girls graduation rates are actually looking good ( I guess it doesnt have anything to do with SAT scores). This might be good news for my D, but what does it mean? I am even more impressed with my D as I watch her brother complete his first year of HS. If he finishes with a 3.0 it will be a miracle! My D made straight A's look so easy I am wondering if she can handle what's to come. So....what does this AA gender gap mean?