The “school systems serving the nation’s very largest cities” are in crisis, according to an April 1, 2008 America’s Promise Alliance report and campaign.

The report uses data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Common Core of Data and the Cumulative Promotion Index to track graduation rates in the 50 largest U.S. cities—and finds that on average, only 52 percent of students in the principal school systems actually earn a high school diploma.

“If three out of every 10 students in the nation failing to graduate is reason for concern, then the fact that just half of those educated in America’s largest cities are finishing high school truly raises cause for alarm. And the
much higher rates of high school completion among their suburban counterparts – who may literally live and attend school right around the corner – place in a particularly harsh and unflattering light the deep undercurrents of inequity that plague American public education,” according to the report.

Despite the stark numbers, the Alliance’s newly launched Drop-Out Prevention Campaign underscores the fact that these rates are not intractable.

Across the country, cities and localities have developed innovations and effective interventions to reduce drop-out, There is also a growing body of evidence that can “better arm educators, policymakers, and the public with the information
they need to more accurately assess the nature and severity of the graduation crisis in their communities and around the country,” notes the report.

Connect for Kids will feature a Q&A with America’s Promise and other resources in the coming weeks.

Quick Links:

• Dropout Prevention Campaign: In the next five years, the Alliance and its partners will reach out to 15 million of our nation's most disadvantaged young people with the goal of improving high school completion rates.

• Ready by 21: The Forum for Youth Investment and its partners, one of which is the America’s Promise Alliance, recently launched the Ready by 21 Challenged to ensure all young people are ready for college, work and life.

Selected Findings of Cities in Crisis:

• Only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the principal school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma. That rate is well below the national graduation rate of 70 percent, and even falls short of the average for urban districts across the country (60 percent).
• In the most extreme cases (Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis), fewer than 35 percent of students graduate with a diploma.
• “It should be noted that these findings capture the likelihood that the average student in the nation’s largest cities will successfully complete high school. In past analysis of state and national data, we have found that certain demographic groups graduate at rates much lower than the student population as a whole. Male students, on average, have graduation rates eight percentage points lower than females.”
• The principal school districts of America’s 50 largest cities collectively educate 1.7 million public high school students – one out of every eight in the country, but they account for nearly one-quarter of the 1.2 million students nationwide who fail to graduate with a diploma each year.
• High school graduation rates are 15 percentage points lower in the nation’s urban schools when compared with those located in the suburbs.

>> read the full report