Fewer Than Half of African-American Males Graduate from High School on Time, Report Finds

The overall graduation rate for African-American males attending U.S. public schools during the 2007-08 school year was 47 percent, a new report from the Schott Foundation for Public Education finds. 

According to Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education (44 pages, PDF), the fourth installment in the biennial report series, half the states in the country have graduation rates for African-American males below the national average. The report provides state-by-state data intended to illustrate which school districts are failing to provide the resources all students need for the opportunity to learn.

Simply stated, Yes We Can is a clear indication that the face and fate of Black males largely depends on the systemic opportunities provided in your state or community. Does your community provide opportunities to become a physician or to be pushed out? Opportunities to be locked up or opportunities to learn? Opportunities to have a state or locally sponsored mentor or a state or locally sponsored parole officer? 

In New York, the graduation rate for the state's regents diploma - which is required for a student to qualify for a high school diploma - is only 25 percent for African-American males, while in New York City, the district with the highest enrollment of African-American students, only 28 percent of African-American males graduated with a regent's diploma on time. According to the report, New Jersey is the only state with a significant African-American population (100,000 or more) that has a greater than 65 percent high school graduation rate for African-American males.    

"Taken together, the numbers in the Schott Foundation for Public Education's report form a nightmarish picture - one that is all the more frightening for being both true and long-standing," said Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone, who wrote the foreword for the report. "These boys are failing, but I believe that it is the responsibility of the adults around them to turn these trajectories around. All of us must ensure that we level the playing field for the hundreds of thousands of children who are at risk of continuing the cycle of generational poverty. The key to success is education."