Newzity

Looks that way. The report by America’s Promise Alliance released today says that the public high schools in the 17 of the 50 largest cities had a less than 50 percent graduation rate while their suburban counterparts did much better.

Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. high school students graduate on time with a regular diploma and about 1.2 million students drop out annually. Which in itself is troubling. But the performance of public schools in the biggest cities was abysmal. City School District in Detroit, MI, is worst with 24.9% graduation rate - that means three in four ninth graders fail to graduate. Indianapolis and Cleveland follow with 30.5% and 34.1%, respectively. The contrast between urban schools and their suburban counterparts can be striking: the urban and suburban school districts in Baltimore, MD, have 34.6% and 81.5% graduation rate, respectively - a gap of 47.0%. The corresponding numbers for Detroit are 47.9% and 75.0% with a gap of 27.1%. Overall, the urban schools have one in eight students, about 1.7 million in total, but for every four failing students one comes from urban schools. The overall graduation rate for 50 biggest metros is about 58% while the number for their suburban schools is 75.4%.

It is a national shame that half of the city school kids won’t be able to understand all the numbers in the report.