Sunday, February 19, 2012
High School Dropouts in America. http://www.all4ed.org/files/GraduationRates_FactSheet.pdf
Nationwide, about seven thousand students drop out every school day. This statistic may not have been noticed fifty years ago, but the era during which a high school dropout could earn a living wage has ended in the United States. By dropping out, these individuals significantly diminish their chances to secure a good job and a promising future. Moreover, each class of dropouts is responsible for substantial financial and social costs to their communities, states, and country in which they live.
Although graduation rates are a fundamental indicator of how schools are ultimately performing, only recently have those rates been rigorously scrutinized, revealing the extent of the crisis in America's high schools. For decades, schools and districts published misleading or inaccurate graduation rates, and as a result, the American public knew little of the scope and gravity of the problems faced by far too many of the nation's high schools. Reputable, independent research has exposed alarmingly low graduation rates that were previously hidden behind inaccurate calculations and inadequate data........................................
Friday, February 17, 2012
COMMON CORE STATE STANADRDS INITIATIVE - http://www.corestandards.org/
The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Parental Imprisonment and Childhood Disadvantage / Wildeman, Christopher. Demography 46. 2 (May 2009): 265-80
.....THE PRISON BOOM AND THE RISK OF PARENTAL IMPRISONMENT
Two types of studies provide insight into the magnitude and social patterning of the risk
of parental imprisonment. Mumola (2000) provided point-in-time estimates of the percentage
of white and black children having a parent imprisoned, showing that 7.0% of
black children and 0.8% of white children have a parent imprisoned at any time. Studies
of the lifetime risk of imprisonment for adults also provide guidance for estimating the
magnitude, rate of change, and disparities in the risk of parental imprisonment. The lifetime
risk of imprisonment for American men more than tripled between 1974 and 1997:
up from 2% to 7% (Bonczar 2003:7). These risks are distributed unequally by race and
class. Black men born in 1965–1969 were 7 times more likely to have been imprisoned
than white men; high school dropouts were 12 to 16 times more likely to go to prison than
college-educated men (Pettit and Western 2004:162). Race and class inequality produced
astonishingly high lifetime risks of imprisonment for black men with little schooling;
nearly 60% of black male dropouts born in 1965–1969 had been to prison by 1999 (Pettit
and Western 2004:162). Although lifetime risks of imprisonment for women were small
compared with the risk for men, they more than doubled over this period; and research
indicates that imprisonment has become relatively common for black women with low
levels of educational attainment (Bonczar 2003:8).....