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Although in the shadows of Big K.C., Kansas City, Kansas City, K.S. struggles with similar academic woes.

The closing of 29 (of 61) schools by the Kansas City (Mo.) school district has captured the attention of the nation. But across the state line in the Big KC’s sister city that shares the same name, a more-fundamental crisis looms. It is one that both cities share with each other — and with other urban school systems across the nation: The young men, no matter their skin color or ethnicity, don’t graduate.

At the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year, young men made up the slight majority of Kansas City’s graduating Class of 2008. This is typical in many districts. But five years later, according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, the numbers reverse. Young women, no matter their race or ethnicity, make up the majority of seniors. Among blacks in the Kansas City district, young women account for a slight majority over young men in the Class of 2008; but among whites and Latinos, the young women outnumber the young men by a 3-to-2 ratio.

Black males in KC barely progress, but...

The white males do even worse. And...

Promoting power rates for young black men are, as one would expect, not high. But with 63 percent of young black male 8th-graders reaching senior year of high school (compared to 72 percent of their female counterparts), at least more than half are making it through. Among young white men, the numbers are even worse: A mere 44 percent of them made it from 8th grade to senior year versus 71 percent of young white women. And only 49 percent of the district’s Latino male 8th-graders were promoted to 12th grade; the promoting power rate for Latino females was 71 percent.

the Latino males do little better.

With less than 60 percent of the young men in the Class of 2008 actually making it from 8th to 12th grade, one wonders how so few are making it to graduation. The answer seems to lie in several factors common across urban districts (and even many suburban ones). This includes over-diagnosis of learning disabilities (13 percent of young black men in the district are labeled as some sort of special ed case versus a mere 7 percent of young black women); and the overuse of harsh school discipline (15 percent of Kansas City’s white males were suspended during the 2005-2006 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s office for Civil Rights database, compared to a similarly atrocious 9 percent of their female schoolmates). The latter may play less of a role because the out-of-school suspension rate of 13 percent for all females, while lower, is far too high anyway.

The consequences can be seen in little Kansas City’s demographic and economic statistics: Seventeen percent of the city’s residents are economically impoverished; only 10 percent of Kansas’ citizens (and 13 percent of U.S. citizens) report poverty-level incomes; 18 of Kansas City households are headed by an unmarried woman (versus 8 percent of the U.S. population). But these consequences can be felt nationwide, especially as higher educational attainment becomes key to economic sustainability.

The issues facing young women, especially young black women (who are more likely than the general population to become head of households and never marry) cannot be ignored; the likelihood that young women are being under-diagnosed for learning disabilities must always be kept in mind. The promoting power rate for Kansas City, while better in some respects than its more-populous neighbor, still means that one out of every four children are dropping out. But if the nation wants to stem the dropout crisis, it needs to work on improving academic achievement among young men. Working in little KC wouldn’t be bad place to start.

• CS Monitor lists what could change w/#NoChikd/#ESEA reauth. http://bit.ly/9xOhCH #edreform #edpolicy #
• Gregory Kane: Forget firing teachers; instead, give kids #SchoolVouchers http://bit.ly/9q84dR #TQ #edreform #CentralFalls #
• Today’s maxim: RT @ClaytonMuhammad: It’s Monday! You don’t have to be great to get started, but you do have to get started to be great! #
• RT @TPCarney: This shell game with reconciliation is blatantly fraud & the Senate bill is a blatant giveaway to Pharma. This “reform” reeks. #
• RT @EdEquality: Geoffrey Canada in today’s NYT: he’s smart, grounded, pragmatic on #charters & #edgap crisis http://nyti.ms/9sMS69 #edreform #
• RT @nyedreform: In Albany, late state budget talks, #RttT related charter-cap lifting being considered at same time. #edreform #AlbanyMess #
• RT @jerridkruse: Create teacher leaders for scalable reform: http://ow.ly/1l8UJ #edtech #edreform #education #teachers #
• RT @DrStevePerry: “We can not tolerate failure when we know what success looks like” — Arne Duncan #edreform #edgap #
• Or why Vince Gray keeps hammering on #MichelleRhee RT @mikedebonis @News8NewsTalk: Rumors persist that Big Fish enters Mayor’s race this wk. #
• Gray unlikely to win because he’s only the best out of a sad lot of DC pols. But Adrian Fenty will now have explain #DCPS record, #Rhee #
• More reasons why Vince Gray is on #Rhee RT @mikedebonis: Gray says if there’s a way he can keep Hardy Principal Pope, ‘I will do it.’ #
• Setting up for campaign 2010 v. Fenty RT @mikedebonis: Vince Gray is allowing a lot of ‘demonstrations’ in the council chamber today #DCPS #
• RT @parentrev: Superintendent of Hartford public schools just testified in favor of Parent Trigger for CT. #edreform #parentpower #
• Of course, #DCPS hearing shows perils of #parentpower It’s not always going to be pretty. But expert-driven ed status quo isn’t either. #
• #headshaker Not one of Change.org’s 10 Ideas for Change winners related to improving #TQ closing #edgap or #edreform http://bit.ly/7eYV64 #
• At least a start RT @avalonsensei: #LAUnified panel recommends changes in teacher evals. http://shar.es/mo8Nc #lausd #edreform #TQ #

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They are all our children. All of us -- including black men and even white men -- should teach them well.

“Black men must mentor Black boys.  No other way has worked or will work.  Many Black men say that they, themselves, have too many problems and competing issues or that they are “too busy” to mentor Black boys… Unless Black men mentor Black boys, Many, if not most, Black boys will continue to struggle and fail in this life.” — Phillip Jackson of the Black Star Project on the need for black men to play stronger roles in the lives of young men.

“If traditional public schools had been meeting the community’s needs, there would never have been a discussion of using public education dollars for anything other than “traditional” neighborhood schools. This is not the case. America has had it up to ‘here’ with the failures of traditional neighborhood schools. Therefore, charters have no impact on good traditional schools.” –CNN commentator Steve Perry on why urban parents are looking to charter schools and other forms of school choice.

“Mistreatment and miseducation causes student failure. The failure experience as a repeated occurrence frequently constitutes child abuse for at-risk kids as debilitating and inexcusable as the better publicized child abuses.  Moreover, failure is condoned and perpetuated as expected traditional educational policy. Teachers, having been successful in school, have difficulty relating to kids’ devastating failure and imperiled lives. Educators and community leaders who should be outraged are, instead, contributing to the calamity… Meanwhile, children’s lives are devastated. Without publicity, there is no outcry; without an outcry, there is no change.” — Bill Page of the At-Risk Student Advocate to EducationNews‘ Michael Shaughnessy about why he is dedicating “my twilight years” to activism on behalf of the most-neglected children.

“If we revert to a patchwork of standards and assessments that vary according to political pressures or societal and community biases, historically disadvantaged students, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will be mislabeled as achieving high standards when in fact they are not. In turn, the schools in which poor and minority students are enrolled are likely to be overlooked when it comes to badly needed investments in teaching and learning and in formulating and implementing fundamental reforms in chronically failing schools.” — Democrats for Education Reform and the Education Equality Project in a recent report explaining the need for standardized testing.

• RT @eriksyring: RT @tvanderark: From Building a Better Teacher to Building Better Learning http://bit.ly/8WZmTg #edreform #
• RiShawn Biddle: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em: Can the Teachers Unions Organize Charter Schools? http://bit.ly/cw3LyS #edreform #RandiWeingarten #
• RT @AndresHenriquez: NYT Editorial “New #standards provide an excellent starting point.” http://nyti.ms/c3hNzL #edreform #NoChild/#ESEA #
• Not from where I sit: RT @sgermeraad: Obama blueprint for #esea requires “dramatic shift in school culture” http://bit.ly/9JQVbT #edreform #
• “By gutting accountability, these children… will wind up back on public education’s proverbial short buses.” http://dropoutnation.net/ic8 #
• RT @Eduflack: Some initial analysis on ED’s proposed ESEA blueprint — http://tinyurl.com/y9xpuhy #edreform #
• Well-stated. RT @JoanneLeeJacobs: New blog post: Pure Spite http://bit.ly/blZdTt #education #
• Michael Shaughnessy interviews Bill Page about how to improve instruction of at-risk students. http://bit.ly/bGUbHJ #edreform #edgap #
• RT @JoanneLeeJacobs: New blog post: The Purpose of Schools http://bit.ly/awQiRi #edreform #education #edpolicy #ARRA #
• Aww. RT @RobertTalbert: First thing the 1yo did when I got home: I picked him up and he snuggled against my shoulder for 10min. #

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Photo courtesy of the New York Daily News

Last month, I clearly stated some reasons why the Obama administration shouldn’t bother pursuing the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act — and why school reformers shouldn’t bother pushing it either. The most important reason of all had to do with the reality that there was ultimately more for the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and other defenders of traditional public education to gain from reauthorization than for school reformers; the proceedings would give them opportunities to weaken the Adequate Yearly Progress accountability provisions within No Child that have helped shine light on the academic mistreatment of poor black, white and Latino children.

Since then, the Alliance for Excellent Education and other groups have pushed even further for reauthorization. And, depending on whether the Obama administration continues to sink into a political quagmire by pursuing health care reform and more-liberalized immigration (the latter of which I strongly support, but know is a tough sell even in good times), they may get reauthorization. But in the process, the Obama administration has shown far too much willingness to ditch AYP and turn the clock back on accountability altogether. President Obama formally announced yesterday his plans to do so — and to the virtual applause of defenders of traditional public education.

This is understandable in light of the administration’s political considerations. Having angered the NEA and AFT over Race to the Top (which has strongly encouraged states to link student test score performance with teacher evaluations, and is helping to lift restrictions on the expansion of charter schools), Obama and congressional Democrats must throw these important constituencies a bone; the NEA and AFT, after all, bring more than $66 million a year in much-needed campaign donations to the table at a time in which Democratic control of Congress is not only not assured, but may actually be lost by November. Considering that Obama has also been critical of AYP while on the campaign trail — and that Republicans post-G.W. Bush are divided about No Child (with many, notably the ranking Republican on the House education committee, strongly opposed to much of what No Child stands for altogether), the administration apparently thinks AYP is not worth keeping.

But by ditching AYP and leaving it up to states and school districts to decide how to remedy pervasive academic failure, the very progress the nation has made in improving the prospects of the nation’s poorest children and racial and ethnic minorities to gain high-quality education will be lost. States and school districts have proven that they will do little to address the achievement gap and improve teacher quality without federal intervention and activism. By gutting accountability, these children — the one’s most-neglected by traditional public education — will wind up back on public education’s proverbial short buses. Without strong accountability, without AYP, the efforts by Alliance and other groups on college readiness will be meaningless; you can’t be ready for college if you can’t read, write or multiply.

Common Core standards will also be meaningless without AYP accountability; so long as schools aren’t held accountable for implementing them in reality, the proposed standards will be little more than ink on paper. Anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t thinking. It doesn’t matter how much support Arne Duncan gives to Common Core (and honestly, NAEP offers a much-better way to bring states under one national standard than the admirable hodgepodge currently under consideration).

School reformers likely feel like they have been sold out. But this is the price they pay for not paying full attention to the politics driving Obama’s activities. Having overreached on far too many big reform efforts — almost all, save for education reform, aren’t embraced by the public — and failing to deliver on the Employee Free Choice Act, his administration is faced with the loss of congressional majorities and anger from labor unions and activists within the party who have expected more from him. He can no longer ignore teachers unions or other traditional defenders of public education, who bring more money to the political game than they do (even with the powerful dollars of Bill Gates and Eli Broad). They also bring the ground troops the Democrats will need to keep their seats. Why not some bad education policy in exchange for maintaining control of Congress?

The best solution for school reformers is to forget reauthorization this year. In fact, push against any decision until 2011, when Obama will need their support for his own re-election. After all, No Child’s provisions will remain in effect for this year. Which means the status quo remains ante. And for the millions of young children benefiting from AYP, this is the best possible scenario given the political climate.

By the Way (2:44 p.m. EST): Eduflack and Andy Smarick offer dueling and differing views on where accountability stands in the proposed reauthorization. Eduflack understates the impact of the changes, but notes that there is much for the NEA and AFT to dislike about the plan — even though without accountability, it is much harder to hold teachers or schools accountable in a meaningful way. Smarick says he’s conflicted; he wants the feds to play a much-smaller role in education reform and regulation, but realizes the damage that will come from the loss of the AYP provisions.

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I discuss the reasons why improving the quality of America’s teaching corps is tantamount to improving student achievement and closing the achievement gap between blacks, Latinos and whites. Outliers such as the firing of 93 high school  teachers by the Central Falls, R.I., school district cover up the reality that teacher dismissals are rare and — thanks to state laws — often too costly to do.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, MP3 player or smartphone. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.

• RT @ELWATERS: “A child has instincts. He knows If you love him or if you don’t.” ~@DrStevePerry 03/13/10 Hbg, PA #
• RT @ClaytonMuhammad: ‘Choice, not chance, determines your destiny’ ~ Aristotle #
• RT @mickeyrevenaugh: RT @tcnixon: If Rip Van Winkle woke up today, the only thing he would recognize is education. #edtech #onlinelearning #
• RT @Edubeat: America’s high school graduation rate ranks 19th in the world. (Forty years ago, it was number one.) #edreform #edpolicy #edgap #

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