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Ear to the Ground

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

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Posted on May 13, 2009
Drop Out
time.com

A report in 2008 also found that the top 50 cities had an aggregate dropout rate of 48%.

Pointing to a dramatic structural problem with schooling in Los Angeles, California’s Department of Education reported Tuesday that the dropout rate of students in the L.A. Unified School District has risen to a whopping 34.9% for the 2008-09 school year.

The L.A. Times:

The high school dropout rate improved slightly in California last year but rose in Los Angeles, where more than one-third of students are officially classified as dropouts, state officials said Tuesday.

Statewide, 68.3% of students graduated and 20.1% dropped out, according to data released by the state Department of Education. For the Los Angeles Unified School District, the dropout rate was 34.9%. Although the state dropout rate was down 1 percentage point from the previous year, the Los Angeles Unified rate was up by more than 3 percentage points.

The dropout rate is an estimate of how many students began ninth grade four years earlier and failed to graduate last spring. The dropout rate and graduation rate do not add up to 100% because they don’t count students who get high school equivalency degrees, are still in school after four years or die.

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By yours truly, May 14 at 10:33 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

As shown in the recent PBS documentary on the Blood & Crips gangs, there are solutions.  What’s holding these back?  $$$, that’s what.  Can’t blame this on the recession, though, because even when the economy is humming along, inner cities got next to zilch money.  What do they get? Incarceration of their youth.  Why?  As scapegoats in the game of divide and rule, thereby diverting the attention of the masses from root causes and what might be done to turn things around in urban America.  And never mind the high price of prisons, better to spend our tax dollars there than tinker with the “natural order.”  What’s it going to take to turn things around?  For sure not the election of this or that politician, based on the direction that Mr. change we can believe in is taking us.  But if not our government, what then?  Our rising up en masse, that’s what.  Otherwise?  We can forget change, being that perpetual war + global warming + economic collapse = doomsday.

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By Skwid, May 14 at 8:30 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Ed: This experiment has been done. It’s called Detriot, and you are correct. Fix it or else.

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By G.Anderson, May 14 at 4:23 pm #

Something, that’s often overlooked in this regard, is that in homes in which there is no father there is a higher drop out rate. Homes in which the father is not involved, also have a higher drop out rate.

Yet, the county of Los Angeles and the State of California, benefit from this because, without a father in the home, child support orders are higher, and the money paid to the state and county from Federal Grant money is higher. Because it’s based on the dollar amount collected.

So, therefore single custody with mother is the favored custody because that results in the highest support orders.

And also, since support awards are also based on visitation, cutting down on the time men spend with their children, results in a bigger pay day for the county and state.

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By sophrosyne, May 14 at 3:57 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Well put.  The growing udnerclass will find employment only in crime, gang activity or as cannon fodder for endless imperial wars.  As America continues to decline, the price of our foreign policy and atrocious economic choices will hurt everyone.  Although of course not equally.

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By NYCartist, May 14 at 7:59 am #

It also “helps” raise test scores, in a cynical way.  In some places, kids are pushed out the door. NYC education is a mess.  Mayoral control is going back to what was about a hundred years ago.  For some good radio, archived shows of “Education at the Crossroads”, produced by Basir Mchawi, WBAI 99.5FM http://www.wbai.org. Free, archived for 90 days.  Station is in fundraising mode now.

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By hippie4ever, May 13 at 6:52 pm #

Ed, think Afganistan. There’s a market for cannon fodder these days & in many areas it’s the only employment option around. What’s even worse than the dropout rates is the pap that passes for education these days. It’s really more about social conditioning for our brave new world.

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By Ed Harges, May 13 at 12:15 pm #

That’s amazing. After a few years of this, Angelinos will find themselves living in a nightmarish dystopia, overrun by hordes of completely feral, unemployable, desperately poor, violent young people. It will be impossible to have any sort of civil society under such conditions. Once this social structure is established, it’s hard to see how it can be undone. You can’t just get rid of these people.

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