The Gap in Graduation Rates

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ehh... thanks for :))

Bypenear of AL 11:00AM December 13, 2009

There is going to be a Big Revolution in Schools, Elementary, High School, and in Voting Patterns.
The White population is growing older, and the New Generations have a different Racial Composition.
The Young and the Youngest won't be so White.Also the Youngest Whites are not educated in so much Racism as their parents, or Racism has been losing power for the Youngest.
These facts will force many changes. Politicians have to "pander" to these New Generations.
I have a Blog on the Younger Generations, Their political preferences and Outlook, Racial Votes, Statistics for States of Racial Composition, etc...
Milenials
http://milenials.blogspot.com/
Also
TossUpStates
http://tossUpStates.blogspot.com/
To see how the New Generations and Racial Compositions are affecting the States Electoral Results.
Vicente Duque

vicente Duque 10:59AM October 04, 2008

All this fuss about affirmative action programs being biased towards minorities and against the white majority misses the point: everyone has the right to succeed!
White, black, asian, everyone should have the opportunity to attend college if they would like to. Where they attend is another issue entirely muddled in class and race issues in the US. As a Boston public high school teacher of low income white, Latino/a and black students I am highly invested in the education of ALL of these children. Each and everyone of them should be given multiple opportunities to suceed. This may be a radical idea but some students have more set backs than others and so they need more help (whether it be finanical or otherwise i.e. affirmative action programs).
Its time for the rich to own up to their class privledge and likewise whites to own up to their race privledge. When it comes to many things in life these folks are BORN with a one up on others. This is non debatable, just look around.
So maybe Obama will help pass some legislation to level the playing field by shifting our war money to education so that every child is able to have a college education. Then we will see what the new playing field will look like.

MG of MI 11:11PM July 13, 2008

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of 3:59PM May 08, 2008

In response to the writer: Different Standards, Different Results, I'll first start out by saying that it's apparent that you've taken a nieve approach in addressing the issues surrounding affirmative action. For instance, your correct by stating that today's students nor their parents have been subject to slavery themselves; however, the remnants of slavery have continued to plague many African-Americans.
It's true that a good number of whites experience the perils of poverty, but they are not made to feel inferior from a young age due to the lack of inclusion of their history in mandated textbooks; they are not treated as second-class citizens when they enter commercial markets; they are not outcasted, in many instances, simply because of their inherent differences (i.e., racial appearance); and, they do not know what it feels like to deal with people who claim to "understand" their struggles.
The reality is that you can't understand the journey that a person has endured until you've experienced real discrimination yourself. To pretend that the infintesimal number of minorities who receive minimal preference based on the hardships they have faced, in anyway take the spots of well deserving white students is a fallacy of the highest degree. If you want to complain about persons being admitted to schools unfairly, take a look at the number of legacies (persons admitted based on familial association) admitted to schools, or people who have access to persons in positions of power. The reality is that most African-American students are not legacies and do not know persons with influence over colleges, because of the lack of opportunity that their parents, grandparents, etc... given the unfortunate history of slavery and oppression that has been imposed upon blacks.
The next time that you decide to voice your opinion, I suggest that you do more homework, so that you don't expose the true ignorence with which you expressed in your writing.

Ignorence is Bliss, huh? of CA 8:18PM May 07, 2008

There was nothing in this story that I found surprising. If you have different admission standards, then I would expect different graduation rates. If you then apply differing amounts of support, you once again alter the result.
The problem with all of this is that it is unequal opportunity. Minority students who are admitted due to a lowered standard and are given extra support, get more opportunity than others. It's hard to come to any other conclusion than the increased opportunity given to some students is by definition discriminitory against other students and shows that these schools DO NOT PROVIDE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.
Kevin Carey's comments are indicative of a higher education industry that views equal results as the only indicator of equal opportunity and thinks unequal opportunity in favor of minorities as justifiable...
"Too often when colleges think about higher education opportunities for minority students, they end at admissions," says Kevin Carey, author of the report and the research and policy manager at Education Sector. "They think if they let students in, that's an opportunity. But opportunity without support is not actually opportunity."
If the situation was reversed and white students were allowed in with lower standards and given special programs, we would rightly call it racist and repugnant. However, when we give that to minority students, we call it equal opportunity.
I understand the arguements about past discrimination and slavery. I also understand that an 18 year-old student looking to get admitted to a college was born in 1990. The 18 year-old's parents were likely born in the mid to late 1960's. How can anyone justify discrimination discriminating against kids who's parents were born in the 1960's with discrimination that happened before they were even born.
To make matters worse, the discrimination could be against a white kid that grew up poor in a house trailer while a minority kid who grew up middle or upper class gets special benefits.
The premise of affirmative action and "so called" equal opportunity are outdated ways of thinking and further detracts from a country that values judging a person on the basis of the content of one's character not the color of one's skin (thank you Mr. King).
It's time that equal opportunity to get back to the plain meaning. Everyone gets judged using the same color blind standard and no one gets special or extra privileges based on their ethnicity.
Also, we need to stop this nonsense of judging the equality of the opportunity based on the equality of the results, because it ignores our individuality and our unique knowledge, skills, effort, and ethic -- the CHARACTER that Mr. King so rightly recognized.

Eric of MI 12:36PM May 07, 2008

The title suggests that the article discusses white students in comparison to students of all other backgrounds, but the comparison in this article is between white and black students only. To say that "white students graduate at noticeably higher rates" is only true if taken in the context of the black-white comparison. Certain groups within the Asian-American population, such as students of Indian and Korean heritage, graduate at rates noticeably higher than those of Caucasian students. However, this is not to say that all Asian groups display this remarkably higher level of performance, as students of some other Asian backgrounds, such as Cambodian, tend to display lower rates of performance.

of OH 8:51PM May 03, 2008