Struggling cities and excelling suburbs: a repeated pattern around the country
Earlier this summer, we published a map of high school graduation rates by district across the United States. We’re now breaking it down and exploring trends in different states and regions.
You can see it all over our map of graduation rates by district: a pocket of low graduation rates surrounded by higher ones, indicating a city and its surrounding suburbs.
It should come as no surprise that urban districts tend to have lower graduation rates than suburban ones. They often have more disadvantaged students and fewer resources.
An analysis of 2009 graduation rates found that 60.9 percent of high-schoolers in cities graduated across the country, compared with 75.3 percent in suburbs. (Towns and rural districts were in the middle, graduating 71.7 percent and 75 percent of students, respectively.)
This week, I thought we’d take a closer look at some of the nation’s largest metro areas to see how similar –– and different –– they are.
Related: Graduation rates change by 30 percentage points over a few miles in the Northeast
First up: Philadelphia, where the divide between urban struggles and suburban successes is clear.
Philadelphia is that huge dark green district. It had a graduation rate of 70.1 percent in 2013. Right across the river in New Jersey, the neighboring dark green district is Camden, with a 53 percent graduation rate. You can see that while some nearby districts in New Jersey still don’t hit the 85 percent graduation rate mark, nearly all places surrounding these two perform better. The districts immediately west of Philadelphia perform much better.
These districts are predominantly white and wealthy, according to Marybeth Gasman, professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions. She attributes part of the difference to the fact that Philadelphia schools have been “starved for money” in recent years, while the suburbs have a large tax base.
“The minute you cross [the city line], you start to see a marked change,” she said. “You start to see plush lawns and really big, beautiful stone homes.”
Contrast this with Chicago, where increases in graduation rates grow somewhat gradually the farther you get from city limits.Struggling cities and excelling suburbs: a repeated pattern around the country - The Hechinger Report:
