<p>For the first two years of my life I lived on a street near Trinity College in Hartford. At that time it was a solidly middle-class neighborhood. Then my parents moved to the 'burbs … home of quiet streets, green lawns, and 90% plus high school graduation rates.</p>
<p>Today’s Hartford Courant carried an editorial lauding Hartford’s much improved school system, while decrying the system’s lamentable high school graduation rate. Has getting inner city kids to graduate really become rocket science? Are there any cities out there doing worse than 29% graduation rates?</p>
<p>Read the article. It is a shame a small state with so many uber high achievers financially and educationally doesn’t look after those who live mere miles from them. The state could have the resources to use to bring up the disadvantaged to the norms of many poor states and not decrease the lifestyles of the wealthy. Sounds like people need to look beyond their district borders and neighborhoods. Maybe if Yale took it on as a project…</p>
<p>This is an ongoing issue for Connecticut: those in Fairfield County (near NYC) are well educated and financially able, while the rest of the state is struggling educationally, financially, etc. So how should this problem get fixed? </p>
<p>NOTE: I’m in a rush, and these numbers are not at all exact! Currently, one way to halt this is what the the governor created a few years ago: an estate tax that charges something like 45% if the estate is valued at a penny over $200,000. Nothing before that. It’s a crazy scheme on estate taxes that has driven many away. </p>
<p>Consistently, it’s as if Fairfield County residents are simply milked to cover social services expenses for those who can’t. The biggest challenge is simply because there is such a disparity. I think we need to look at each community to see if they are doing enough for themselves rather than rely on someone else. Should those in Manhattan’s Upper East Side pay taxes for education and social services compared to those on the Lower East Side just because they can and “it’s fair”?</p>
<p>There were a couple of high schools in Augusta, GA a couple of years ago that were in the 20s. Shocked the heck out of my kids, who live in an area where virtually everyone goes to college.</p>
<p>Any Superintendent and Principal in these areas should be fired. Something DRASTIC has to happen or it will take decades to recover from this mess. We need to stop throwing more money at the problem and start fixing it. Poor kids and poor communities do not have to mean poor education. Think about the old one room school houses and also the kids who were successful during the depression. My mom always told us that being polite, respectful and doing homework were three free thing that would take us far in life. </p>
<p>Some of the parents in these school districts might be a lost cause, but we still have a chance with the kids.</p>
<p>I live in a very mixed city in New England, with public schools educating everyone from the wealthy to the most economically deprived. I’ve observed my kid’ classmates over the years, and it’s easy to see who won’t make it through high school as far back as kindergarten. With chaotic home environments, parents who speak little or no English, no place to study, no one to encourage academic achievement or oversee homework, poor nutrition, minimal medical and dental care, no books in the home, TV’s on all day and night, these kids start at a terrible disadvantage. The schools have them for 6 or 7 hours a day for perhaps 180 days per year. They can’t do it all. Superintendents and principals aren’t responsible for transforming society singlehandedly.</p>
<p>I strongly agree with geeps20. There is no magic unless the parents stand behind the changes that are needed to enable educating children in neighborhoods such as the one in Hartford. Or at least to get parents in such districts to stay out of the way.</p>
<p>The simplistic idea – very much in vogue at the moment in California – is to fire the principal and as many as 50% of the teachers in poorly performing school districts, and to open up any local school in the state to students in such poorly performing schools. The motivation for this is to get in line for federal funds. This can only lead to further demotivation of teachers who work so very hard in troubled school districts.</p>
<p>Some very hard social changes need to be made in troubled communities, with more support for educators, and more funding for the schools. Parents need to be included in the changes.</p>
<p>Educating any student is a 3 legged stool–consisting of a student leg, a parent leg and a teacher leg. If you are missing any one leg, it is hard to make progress. Swapping out the teacher leg only isn’t likely to change anything.</p>
<p>One problem with recording drop out rates is that the data often isn’t good. A kid may disappear from high school, but did he move to a different school? Out of town? The survey will just count him as a drop out when he could be graduating from another school.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that the drop out rate isn’t terrible in certain parts of the country. But there’s plenty of incomplete data out there.</p>
<p>Detroit has something like a 20% graduation rate. When you also consider that the entirety of Detroit isn’t a complete **** hole (some are only partially), when you look at the worst high schools in Detroit… And then that’s only the kids who actually start their freshman year, doesn’t include the middle school dropouts.</p>
<p>While this is nowhere near the sub 30% grad rate, I was surprised to find that in my solidly middle class, non economically depressed, very apple pie midwestern town, HS graduation rate is under 70%. We have no excuses.</p>
<p>My neighborhood high school has a 33% graduation rate (as of the class of 2008). The area it serves includes some of the most affluent neighborhoods in the city (as well as some very poor ones), but very close to 0% of the kids from those neighborhoods attend the school. Almost all of the college-bound students, rich and poor, go to academic magnet schools with 95%+ graduation rates (or to private or religious schools), so of course that tends to depress the rate at the neighborhood schools they avoid. Overall, the city’s public high schools graduate a little more than 50% of the ninth graders who start. At the neighborhood, non-specialized high schools, the graduation rates vary from 30% to around 70%.</p>
<p>I live outside a medium sized city. The city is consistently in the top 10 for murders in cities of it’s size. Gangs are prevalent, drugs, drive bys etc the norm. The cities finances are in such disarray they have been taken over by the state.</p>
<p>The school district, however, is not bad. The kids who go to college go to some very fine schools. They educate a Hispanic majority, white minority.<br>
The graduation rate for the 4000 student high school is 65%. The breakdown is interesting -
61% male
68% female</p>
<p>69% White
71% Black
62% Latino/Hispanic
92% Asian</p>