The nation’s young black male population is unquestionably being molded and cultivated for career prison labor and premature deaths, says a shocking new study. Less than half of America’s African American males graduate on time, says the most recent “Yes We Can: The 2010 Schott 50 State Report on Black Males in Public Education.”
The Schott study reveals a dumbfounding and almost criminal statistic: That the overall 2007–2008 graduation rate for black males in the U.S. was only 47 percent. The report shows that out of 50 states, half have graduation rates for black male students below the national average. New York’s graduation rate of only 25 percent for black male students is the lowest of any state. New York City, the district with the nation’s highest enrollment of black students and many accolades for reform, only graduates 28 percent of its black male students on time. These statistics — and the other alarming data in the report — point to a national education and economic crisis.
In Miami-Dade County, Fla., Cleveland, Ohio and Detroit. also have atrociously low graduation rates for black male students — each sitting at an abysmal 27 percent. Without education and hope and aspirations for future success, these young black men take up residence on urban street corners, reside in front of liquor stores and occupy a prominent and inordinate role at the wrong end of America’s judicial system.
The Schott Study also came up with the following horrific stats that should alarm the Obama administration as well as educators, legislators and reform advocates across the country:
The five worst performing districts with large black male student enrollment are New York City (28 percent); Philadelphia (28 percent); Broward County, Fla. (39 percent); Chicago (44 percent) and Nashville, Tenn. (47 percent).
The districts with the lowest graduation rates for black male students are Pinellas County, Fla. (21 percent); Palm Beach County, Fla. (22 percent); Duval County, Fla. (23 percent); Charleston County, S.C. (24 percent) and Buffalo, N.Y. (25 percent).
The states with black male student enrollment exceeding 100,000 that have the highest graduation rates for black male students are New Jersey (69 percent), Maryland (55 percent), California (54 percent) and Pennsylvania (53 percent).
Conversely, the Schott study also showed that black males can learn and graduate, albeit in too few numbers:
Some states with small populations, such as Maine, North Dakota, New Hampshire and Vermont have graduation rates for black males higher than the national average for white males.
The districts with black male student enrollment exceeding 10,000 that have highest graduation rates for black male students are Newark, N.J. (76 percent); Fort Bend, Texas (68 percent); Baltimore County, Md. (67 percent) and Montgomery County, Md. (65 percent).
“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 provided the foreword in 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.”
Canada’s words are echoed by an officials from the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
“Currently, the rate at which black males are being pushed out of school and into the pipeline to prison far exceeds the rate at which they are graduating and reaching high levels of academic achievement,” said Dr. John H. Jackson, president and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. “It is not enough to focus on saving the few. We must focus on systemic change to provide all our children the opportunity to learn.”
This is the strongest proof yet that young black males, long the nation’s most despised, hated and feared demographic, are being harnessed for self-destruction and modern-day slave labor in the nation’s prison-industrial complex. When will we begin to save our most precious cultural resource? –terry shropshire
