Some suggest that boys leave school early to take decent paying jobs as painters or truck drivers. But more than a third of the students lost from the high school pipeline depart before 10th grade. That's a little young to be driving trucks.
When it comes to your sons, schools miss the mark
This month, an estimated 1.2 million teenagers — or roughly 30% of the high school class of 2007 — won't be graduating with their peers. But who are the dropouts?
A study published Tuesday by Education Week, an authoritative trade publication, confirms a few well-known facts: Graduation rates are higher in the suburbs than in the inner cities; they are higher among Asians and whites than blacks and Hispanics.
The study also depicts a lesser known but striking gap: Regardless of ethnicity, the graduation rate for boys is lower than that for girls. Nearly three-fourths of girls make it through high school but only two-thirds of boys.
This disparity demands more attention because the kinds of blue-collar jobs once available to high school dropouts are drying up. A globalized economy demands that most students need not just a high school degree but also training or academic study beyond 12th grade.
The dropouts threaten to create a permanent, growing underclass of undereducated males.
As to why fewer boys make it through high school, there are about as many theories as there are dropouts. Some suggest that boys leave school early to take decent paying jobs as painters or truck drivers. But more than a third of the students lost from the high school pipeline depart before 10th grade. That's a little young to be driving trucks.
No, something else is going on, and the signs point to this: More boys are dropping out of high school because they're not equipped to succeed academically when they get there.
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