This is just wrong!

City district ranks last in graduations

BY CHASTITY PRATT
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER

Fewer than one in four high school students in Detroit graduate on time, according to a new report released Tuesday that compares the 50 largest U.S. school districts and ranks the city's public schools last in the nation.
Only 21.7% of the Detroit district's students graduate in four years, the Diplomas Count report said. In it, the

Editorial Projects in Education Research Center in Bethesda, Md., used a formula based on the number of students at the beginning of the year in each class -- ninth, 10th, 11th and 12th -- and the number of students who moved on to the next class the following year or graduated. The magazine Education Week published the report Tuesday.

Detroit Public Schools officials were quick to refute the figure, however, saying that the report does not take into account the large number of students it loses to suburban districts, charter schools or alternative programs, such as those for the General Equivalency Development certificate. At the same time, they noted various efforts -- including online community college courses -- to help retain students.

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Part of Detroit's problem, according to the report, is that it suffers from low parental involvement as students grow older and a high transitory rate that leads students to attend several schools before graduation. It also has a small but significant number of students who end up in alternative programs to get a GED.

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http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060621/NEWS01/606210441

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No matter whether the figures are "correct" or there are oddball explanations acounting for how the Detroit kids slip into alternative programs or charter schools or schools outside the Detroit district, it is absolutely wrong that the majority of Detroit kids are not getting the education they need to prepare them for the years ahead. This is where * and his people are failing. They have left 3/4's of a city's kids not only behind, but in a trash dump. This is where Mr. Gates and his foundation needs to focus big time--in Detroit and in all the other bottom of the barrel school districts.

It's a caste system... the amount spent on education per pupil is dictated by the local tax base in which you live. We need to equalize the education funding across the nation. Keep the school boards, keep the state departments of educaiton, keep local control... just equalize funding. And also create a "private school tuition tax" which taxes all private school tuition (for K-12, not college) and gives the money received by this tax into the public education.
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That is the conundrum. Use the ex. of the drinking age and speed limits. Theoretically there is no federal speed limit or drinking age, but generally it is the same all over because if some state said "Well we dont wanna!" the Feds will say that they will cut funding to...X,Y,amd Z. That is the same thing you will run into with education, I fear.

Detroit's is $7,000. I grant you that neither one is enough. But we're graduating 85% of our kids and sending a bunch on to the best colleges in the country. There is clearly something more going on than just money. Our kids who don't finish sometimes go to work to help single moms, don't see education as necessary in their future jobs, or just drop out and get on with their drugs and crime and road to nowhere. I don't see how schools can carry the entire load of painting a brighter vision of the future for our kids.

Schools open all year.
7:00 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Drop out if you "must", but Just go away if you're going to drop out and stop being a burden on those who don't want to drop out. And come back whenever you're ready to do it right.
No age limit.
Add expanded "Dewey-esque" Curriculum. And, god forbid, tracking programs/optons!! + proactive developmental stratigies.
Individual education planning including authentic and standards-based assessment.

to have programs with the kids--too many being kids, themselves.

There's a huge difference in schools that bother to take the time to create a curriculum that includes parents and ones that don't. It's amazing to me that I still don't get a newsletter from our local superintendent which is something that most schools did 20 years ago. How are parents supposed to know what to get involved in without regular communication and how do they expect senior citizens to pass school bonds when they don't make the kids pertinent to the seniors. Some schools really suck at welcoming parents into the process.

Regional differences.

year-round, day and night-school for everyone who does the classroom work for whatever they need to function . . . practical curriculums for bench-marked skill criteria sets . . . the Taxpayer's School system.

Also, Block scheduling options.

so it can be privatized. This is the neocon dream, it creates a cheap labor work force to put us closer to being on equal terms with third world countries and globalization. Defund programs such as Head Start and give no safety net to workers, bust all unions and now we can make clothes as cheap as Honduras. It will take a generation to change what the repubs did in a few years.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/MediaCenter/Speeches/BillgSpeeches/BGSpeechNGA-050226.htm

In any event, it isn't Mr. Gates' responsibility to fix all our city schools anyway. I don't know what the problem is, I've never heard a rational explanation. I am more than willing to listen to anybody who can explain to me why inner city kids don't finish school, and I don't mean the same not enough money, bad teachers, bad parents, etc. There's something more going on when so few students graduate.

When you walk thru a metal detector and receive threats and have to travel thru neighborhoods where you may be shot, walk thru hookers, pimps and drug dealers.. what's the point. Your parents don't care if they are even around. the teachers don't last (lives threatened). The ghetto stays ghetto.