“The CRDC data are more than numbers and charts-they illustrate in powerful and troubling ways disparities in opportunities and experiences that different groups of students have in our schools”, King said in a press release.
Advertisement
The Civil Rights Data Collection, a national survey of every school in the country conducted by the Department of Education, found that while suspensions and expulsions decreased overall by almost 20 percent between the 2011-2012 and 2013-2014 school years, African-American public preschool children were suspended or expelled at roughly triple the rate of their white counterparts. Ninety-nine students – or 79.2 percent – of the 125 enrolled that year missed at least 15 days of school, statistics show. Thirteen percent of all K-12 students – more than 6.5 million nationally – miss three weeks or more of school a year.
The study, which also analyzed student discipline and suspensions, represents the department’s first look at student absenteeism data, according to CBS News. Roughly one in seven of all K-12 public schools nationwide reported having not a single chronically absent student that year.
Audio clip: Listen to audio clip.
In elementary school, American Indian or Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students were twice as likely to be chronically absent as white students.
For the first time, the Department of Education kept track of how many schools have a sworn law-enforcement officer working inside.
In addition, black students are also more likely to be arrested or referred to law enforcement while at school. The report is based on data from more than 95,000 public schools and more than 50 million students.
Alycia Meriweather, interim superintendent of Detroit Public Schools, said Wednesday: “This is a serious problem, which I would term a leading indicator, that impacts everything else we are trying to accomplish at the District”. Black students were 1.4 times as likely to be chronically absent as their white counterparts.
“A systemic failure to educate some groups of children as well as others tears at the moral fabric of the nation”, Education Secretary John B. King Jr., said in a phone call with reporters.
“The Civil Rights Data Collection outlined a number of deeply disturbing inequalities in American education”, Kahlenberg said. Hispanic and white students were close to the national average of 13 percent. “You don’t get the credits in high school and that’s what leads to dropping out”, he said.
The report also found that 1.6 million students attend a school with a sworn law enforcement officer, but not a school counselor. Giving very young students the best start possible isn’t just a Baltimore or a Maryland problem but it’s particularly crucial for city schoolchildren families because they too often face so many other disadvantages that can interfere with education. The same is true when it came to experienced teachers.
Among the strategies the district is using include reaching out to parents to find out why students are missing school and rewarding excellent attendance. That compares to 56 percent of high schools with low numbers of black and Latino children that offered calculus.
Advertisement
Now, in what could be game-changing for efforts to close the achievement and graduation gaps, the White House, the Education Department, the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University and 30 communities across the nation are mobilizing a low-priced army of trained “success mentors” to reduce chronic absenteeism among the students most likely to fall off track.
