Dropout Rate and Prevention

Ever since the Trayvon Martin shooting, people across the country have engaged in an important dialogue about the challenges faced by African American boys and young men in this country, and rightly so. A focus on – and substantial investment in – the success of males of color in this country is critical and long overdue.

But as the National Women’s Law Center has said time and again, there has been very little attention to the barriers to education that girls and young women of color face, which should not be underestimated in terms of their gravity or their impact. I saw only one piece after the verdict, the Washington Post’s ‘Bolster’ black boys, but don’t forget about black girls (and quoting President Obama’s remarks) pointing out that the important focus on African American boys does not have to be at the exclusion of African American girls, who face very real – but sometimes different – obstacles in education, the juvenile justice system, and beyond.

That’s why I was so excited to read this excellent interview with Dr. Monique Morris conducted by New American Media and shared by the National Opportunity to Learn Campaign with the headline “Are Girls Invisible in the Movement for Boys and Men of Color?”. Read more »

Long gone are the days when small infractions of the student code required writing something on the board 100 times. But, even if those days were still here, you would probably see more minority students and students with disabilities being subject to punishment. Unfortunately, these children are now being excluded from school at alarming rates:

Nearly 1 in 4 Black students were suspended during the 2009-2010 school year.

Nearly 1 in 5 students with disabilities were suspended during the 2009-2010 school year.

For white students and students without disabilities that figure is 1 in 14. The Center for Civil Rights Remedies (an initiative of the UCLA Civil Rights Project) revealed these shocking statistics in a recent study, Out of School and Off Track: The Overuse of Suspensions in American Middle and High Schools, that analyzed the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection. The Center also released a summary of sixteen new research studies that describe the “school discipline gap, contributing factors, and the benefits of reducing disparities for students.” Read more »