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Re: Bin Laden Dead
Old 06-05-2011, 11:16 PM   #73
KillerGremlin
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Default Re: Bin Laden Dead

Quote:
Originally Posted by Teuthida View Post
And why is an urban environment bad exactly? All of NYC is an urban environment. I've never been to Chicago so perhaps everything is more segregated there? It seems like you have a pretty specific view of city life. It seem to me like a poor community would be much worse off in a more suburban/rural area where their options are limited and there's only one or two schools to a town.

Of course it depends on the teacher more than anything, but the better ones are drawn to better funded schools. I'm looking at ways at fixing the school system. You can't make a kid's father go back home or remove drugs from the streets. You need to think about what you can change.
I dug up some hard numbers, just for fun, and oddly 2006 statistics report that New York city's largest school district had lower graduation rates than Chicago's largest school district. I haven't really dissected the statistics because I am lazy and at this point I don't want to invest too much time into this thread, but before I post any statistics let me piss into the wind for a minute.

I attended the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). I was involved in Psychology, Gender and Women Studies and Education. Those were the 3 areas where I probed the most. I actually did a work study with a national Chicago based organization, so I extended my classroom experience a bit and got involved with some large scale educational gatherings. "Fixing" the Chicago Public School system is something that many people are working on. People literally dedicate their lives and careers to this issue. People get PhDs in school management or urban settings and work to try to bring resolution to the CPS problem. I cannot emphasis how many people have dedicated their lives to this issue. The take-home point here is that I am feeble and this is just a forum thread. I can highlight where there are deficits or inequities, I can point to problems, but I certainly cannot fix them.

Suggesting that if someone wants to succeed they need to work harder or attend a different school doesn't provide a very tangible solution to this issue. In the CPS, you are talking about an annual graduation rate of around 50%. The problem is large, it is systemic...and telling kids to go to different schools would literally displace thousands of kids. At this point we are talking about large scale social issues, things that are deeply imbedded and have a history. Like Prof S showed with the social welfare stuff, a lot of this is policy that goes way back. Back to immigration, early Chicago, and early racism.

So some stats:

I'm pulling these numbers from the Chicago Public Schools Office of Performance website. If you'd like to check the info feel free to browse here:
http://research.cps.k12.il.us/cps/ac...llschools.html

Anyway, according to the stats released by CPS, in 2010 55.8% of students graduated high school, with 41.1% dropping out. That is actually an improvement from previous years.

Looking at the College enrollment fact sheet: “54.4% of CPS 2009 graduates enrolled in college – an increase of 1.9 percentage points from 2008.” There has been an increase in college enrollment for the past 5 years – a good thing. In 2009, 10,249 CPS graduates enrolled in college in 2009, which is an all time high for CPS.

Consider this: in 2009 there were 18,846 CPS graduates: 10,249 were enrolled in college, or 54.4%.
54.4% of graduates enrolling into college…isn’t bad right?

Before we look at things from a race perspective, we should frame these graduation and dropout rates compared to the national average.

2003-2004 stats reveal that, on average, CPS has higher dropout rates than the outlying schools as well as the national average:


The good news is that graduation rates in Chicago are rising…


So seemingly, it is not all doom and gloom…on the other hand, in 2009, only 48.1% of African American males and 59.5% of AA females enrolled in college…only 43.2% Latino males and 49.4% Latino females enrolled…

By the way, and oddly enough, according to this article from 2006, in the largest school districts, New York has a lower graduation rate than Chicago does…

http://www.usatoday.com/news/educati...ut-rates_x.htm

So evidently New York could be just as fucked up in certain areas.

Back to Chicago…

Quote:
OF 100 CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOL FRESHMEN,
SIX WILL GET A COLLEGE DEGREE
Quote:
Of every 100 freshmen entering a Chicago public high school, only about six will earn a bachelor's degree by the time they're in their mid-20s, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Thursday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

The prospects are even worse for African-American and Latino male freshmen, who only have about a 3 percent chance of obtaining a bachelor's degree by the time they're 25.

The study, which tracked Chicago high school students who graduated in 1998 and 1999, also found that making it to college doesn't ensure success: Of the city public school students who went to a four-year college, only about 35 percent earned a bachelor's degree within six years, compared with 64 percent nationally.

...
- African-American and Latino students from Chicago high schools have the lowest graduation rates--lower than the national average for those groups and lower than their white and Asian peers from Chicago. Just 22 percent of African-American males who began at a four-year college graduated within six years.
....
http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/news_citati...gotribune.html

So while there is an increase in College enrollment, and while around 50+% do enroll into college, the graduation rates are HORRIFIC.

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2008 71.8% of Bachelor degrees were earned by White people, 9.8% by black, 7.9% by Hispanic, and 7.0% by Asian. That’s a national number, btw, so when you stack that up to say…the 6 out of 100 people who get a degree who attended CPS…I mean the numbers are harrowing.


These are just the graduation and college RATES. These don’t even touch the social problems. Like the kids who see gang violence.

I guess in my next post I can link to all the Chicago gangs, the crime rates by area/neighborhood, and I can link to articles discussing mortality rates among CPS attendees.

I also propose several solutions that may or may not be steps in the right direction to fixing some of these issues:
1) More parent involvement
2) Longer school days and better school programs
3) Decriminalizing drugs like Marijuana and Crack
4) Figuring out how to tackle the anti-white feelings towards education within the Black community
5) Fixing Affirmative Action and Social Welfare

Last edited by KillerGremlin : 06-05-2011 at 11:26 PM.
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