The Rochester city school district has earned another
disturbing distinction. Only 9 percent of the district’s black males who were
eligible graduated in the 2009 to 2010 school year, according to a recent report.
Rochester graduated the lowest percentage of black and Latino male students of
any district in the country, behind Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
| The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males 2012, an
analysis of graduation rates, was released by the Schott Foundation for Public
Education. | “The necessary systemic reforms and investments to significantly
improve black male outcomes and to provide them with a fair and substantive
opportunity to learn have been at a painstakingly slow pace or not at all,” the
report says. | The situation for Latino males is equally grim. Rochester
graduated only 10 percent of its Latino males in 2009 to 2010, the report says.
| But district superintendent Bolgen Vargas disputes the report’s finding.
District data shows that 42 percent of eligible black males and 43 percent of
eligible Latino males graduated in 2010, he says. Vargas says he doesn’t have
an explanation for the disparity in numbers.
This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2012.
There is so much bad news about the status of poverty in our city. We are bombarded with it daily. It is dire and is a serious calamity that requires our most diligent and unified response. Still, I find it hard to believe the statistics that the Schott report claims, though its conclusion that progress is too slow is one that is hard to dispute. There is not much reason to argue whose figures are correct, when there is so much work we all need to do to improve these outcomes.