Report Ranks States by How Well Black Males Fare in Their High Schools

A new report by the Schott Foundation for Public Education ranks the states on the graduation rates of black males in their high schools and calls for new efforts to close achievement gaps.

The report lists Michigan as the state with the lowest high-school graduation rate for black males. As of 2006, 33 percent of the black males in its high schools graduated on time, compared with 74 percent of the state’s non-Hispanic white male students. Also on the report’s list of the 10 states with the lowest high-school graduation rates for black males (in order of lowest to highest) were Wisconsin, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, New York, Nevada, Illinois, Georgia, and Wyoming.

“The worst problems are concentrated in a few large metropolitan areas,” the report says. “Specifically, New York City, Chicago, Detroit, and Dade County [Miami] fail to graduate the great majority of their black male students with their peers.”

The report blames the performance gaps that it documents mainly on the poor quality of many of the schools where black students are concentrated, arguing that “black students in good schools do well.” In most of the country, it says, black males are a third as likely as white males to have highly effective teachers.

Among other recommendations, the report calls for efforts to monitor the distribution and use of education funds in states where less than half of black males graduate or where the graduation-rate gap between black and white males exceeds 15 percentage points. —Peter Schmidt