"The Obama Administration has allocated $4.35 billion dollars in education grants for states to support innovative programs that will lift those districts with students at the bottom on par with our successful students.
States will have to alter the way they have tried to solve this problem by changing policies, allocating resources, measuring results, and involving staff, parents, community and private industry. They will also have to remove the cap on charter schools as well as challenge the well established traditional professional system of educating kids in urban schools as we seek “Race to the Top” funds. Here is the problem in California for African American students:
There are 454,780 or 7.3% Black students in California public schools. We only have 13,115 or 4.3% Black teachers in our classrooms. We have the highest drop-out rate of any group at 32.9%, which is 10% higher than the next group. Out of the 26,026 Black students that graduated in 2007/08 only 6,060 had the required courses to enter our UC/CSU campuses of higher learning. This is 23.3% of those that graduated. Our Academic Performance Index rating is at 659 which is far below the target score of 800 we would like for it to be. The sad thing about our failing or low performing schools is the longer Black students stay in school the worse things get for them. For example in our 2nd through 6th grades Black students scored at 705; in 7th through 8th grade they scored 649 and 612 in 9th through 12th grades."
