Few Minorities Get Best High School Diplomas

These statistics are dreadful, any way you look at them:

According to city figures, even as overall graduation rates have risen, the 18 percent of students who received Regents diplomas in 2004 was down slightly from 18.2 percent in 2003.

 

Black and Hispanic students, Ms. Cahill acknowledged, not only graduated at lower rates but also, if they graduated, were less likely to earn Regents diplomas than their white counterparts. Of the 23,541 black students who should have graduated in 2004, 48.9 percent graduated on time, but only 9.4 percent earned Regents diplomas, while 36 percent of white students did.

Eva Moskowitz is absolutely right that "this is a monumental civil rights crisis"

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New York Times

November 30, 2005

Few Minorities Get Best High School Diplomas

By ELISSA GOOTMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/education/30graduates.html?pagewanted=print

 

Also reported in:

New York Sun

http://www.nysun.com/article/23707

 

Fewer than one in 10 black or Hispanic students who enter New York City high schools graduate four years later with a coveted Regents diploma, education officials testified yesterday.

 

Speaking before the City Council Education Committee, Michele Cahill, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein's senior counselor for education policy, acknowledged that the statistic was dismal, calling the city's graduation rate "perhaps the most urgent problem that the school system faces."

 

According to city figures, 54.3 percent of students graduated on time in 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available. But only 18 percent of the class of 2004 received Regents diplomas....