Posted 3:12 PM by Susan Darst Williams

NEBRASKA'S 40% GRAD RATE FOR BLACK MALES
IS ATROCIOUS IN THE MIDWEST
AND THE BIGGEST RACIAL GAP IN THE NATION,
BUT FAIRLY NORMAL OTHERWISE

Talk about shocking: that horrendous 40% graduation rate for black teenage boys in Nebraska is about on par with the East and West Coasts, and actually better than many of the larger cities.

Even so, statewide figures and the huge disparity between black and white graduation rates for boys -- 83% for whites vs. that 40% for blacks -- lands Nebraska in a tie with New York for the largest statewide graduation racial gap in the nation.

Ew! Ew! Ewwww! That's a claim to No. 1 that nobody in Nebraska wants to hear -- and they're doing it to our kids, using our money.

See a report on 2008 national data from the Scott Foundation for Public Education, www.schottfoundation.org

If there has ever been a time to pull all low-income and minority children out of the public schools, and put them in the private schools where they can succeed, it is now.

There is no doubt that the relative illiteracy of Head Start teachers, the lack of phonics instruction in the early grades, and the overall atmosphere of harsh, unkind, zero-tolerance discipline by staff in the public schools has created a monstrous amount of illiteracy among young black males, and correspondingly high dropout rates with correspondingly high rates of juvenile delinquency and violence.

We need private donors to fund 200 one-room, K-12 schoolhouses around North Omaha, and it really wouldn't cost that much . . . and let OPS' inner-city schools implode, as they should, and let the district concentrate on its middle-class and upper-class schools, which also need help, but aren't in as drastic a crisis.

Labels: Nebraska No. 1 in racial graduation gap