Schools in some of the country’s largest cities are struggling to graduate their students, according to a new report. The report, issued by America’s Promise Alliance, found schools in Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland and 14 other major U.S. cities graduated only 50 percent of their students.
About 70 percent of American youth graduate on time overall. That means about 1.2 million students drop out before graduation—far too many for Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and the Alliance’s founding chair.
“When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it’s more than a problem, it’s a catastrophe,” he says. The catastrophe is most apparent in major urban areas. Detroit’s public schools graduate 24.9 percent of their students. In Indianapolis, only 30.5 percent of students get their diplomas. The spread between urban and suburban schools in some of those underperforming cities is even more striking: Baltimore’s suburban schools graduate 81.5 percent of their students. In urban Baltimore, the graduation rate drops to 34.6 percent. (Associated Press)
