The Council of the Great City Schools is calling on the federal government to do something about the academic and social achievement gap between black and
white kids.
“Black males continue to perform lower than their peers throughout the country on almost every indicator,” says the groundbreaking report A Call for Change: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Black Males in Urban Schools.
The study focuses on six areas in black kids' lives, including readiness to learn, in-school experience and college/career preparation. Here are a few things the report found:
- One out of every three black children lived in poverty compared with one out of every ten white children in 2007.
- Black or poor students attending public school were more likely to be held back during their K-8 school career than their classmates. In 2007, at least 23 percent of students who repeated a grade were poor, and 16 percent were black, compared with 5 percent of non-poor and 8 percent of white students.
- Black males were nearly twice as likely to drop out of high school as white males in 2008. Nine percent of black males dropped out of high school compared with 5 percent of white males.
The report points out the lack of federal attention put on the black-white achievement gap. Among several recommendations involving federal involvement, the Council calls for a White House conference to create a plan of action.