The senseless deaths of youth must stop. It's just that simple.

What is happening today in the dropout nation — or what has been happening while your editor has been on the road:

1. Amid last week’s woeful responses to the reading test results from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress, Education Sector’s Chad Alderman offers a different perspective. He notes that if you break down the results — and realize that the underlying sampling now includes more blacks and Latinos (in order to better represent the nation), one will see some real progress. Black 4th-graders, for example, scored 23 points higher than fellow students in the same grade four years ago. This is all good. But a more-longitudinal assessment — showing progress among students between being in 4th and 8th grade — would certainly offer more perspective on the nation’s academic progress.
2. Meanwhile the Bluegrass Institute’s Richard Innes notes that Kentucky’s NAEP performance may seem better than that of California, but appearances are deceiving. Especially when Kentucky’s education officials suppresses 46 percent of its English Language Learners and special ed students. Declares Innes: “only two other states in the entire country played the exclusion game harder.”
3. Those two states, according to Dropout Nation‘s analysis: Maryland and Tennessee , which respectively excluded 57 percent and 55 percent of their ELL and Special Ed students. Which may explain why Maryland, in particular, is among the most-stubborn in resisting school reform efforts (and always seem to be the best-performing state in the union). New Jersey, which excludes 42 percent of ELL and Special Ed students, is no better, and neither is Delaware (it excludes 42 percent of ELL and Special Ed students); North Dakota excluded 44 percent of students while Ohio excluded 40 percent of its ELL and Special Ed students from NAEP. Certainly this dishonor role deserves much in the way of scorn; it also offers more ammunition to opponents of Common Core State Standards and other attempts at putting the nation under one national curricula standard.
4. Speaking of scorn, two more deserving of it are the American Federation of Teachers’ New York City local and the Big Apple branch of the NAACP. They succeeded in convincing one judge to halt the shutdown of 19 of the city’s worst-performing schools and their replacement with higher-quality options. As Chancellor Joel Klein rightly notes: ““My view is that you don’t send students to failing schools, schools that can’t provide them what they need. The sad thing is that the union would bring a lawsuit to resign kids to failing schools in order to save jobs. And ultimately, that is what this is about.” Exactly. Shame on the two groups and those who support their position.
5. Tom Vander Ark offers some thoughts on how to develop high-quality urban schools through a portfolio approach.
6. Meanwhile in Chicago, the Black Star Project is looking for 1,000 men to help mentor the city’s children and keep them out of violence. Given that 143 Chicago Public School students have been shot during the 2009-2010 school year (and 20 slain), the need for adults to take to the schools and take action is greater than ever. Do your part.

Check out this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, this time a part two of my focus steps needed to improve teacher quality. More will be coming down the pipe later this week.

And finally, to start off your Monday, here’s a little Tower of Power. Enjoy.

Source: Consortium on Chicago School Research

A Chicago Public Schools freshman performing well academically and with good attendance is more likely to gain the credits needed to be promoted to the next grade. This in turn, means that they will graduate; 81 percent of Chicago freshmen promoted on time made it to graduation in four years while just three in 10 students graduated, according to the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Source: Consortium on Chicago School Research

On-time graduation rarely happens in Chicago Public Schools. A mere 64 percent of the freshmen who made up the district’s Class of 2012 had attained the credits needed for promotion to the next grade. It is even worse for the district’s young men, especially the ones attending George Washington High School, one of the district’s poor-performing schools. Just 57 percent of male freshmen were on the path to graduation versus 71 percent of their female classmates. At George Washington, only 48 percent of freshmen males were on path to graduation; 73 percent of females were likely to graduate on time.

The problems are longstanding. Seven years ago, just 49 percent of freshmen males attending Washington were on the path to graduating on time. More importantly, the problems begin long before children reach high school. The dropout crisis begins in elementary school with poor academic instruction along with the lack of focus on addressing deficiencies in reading. An overdiagnosis of learning disabilities — generated in part by the tendency of boys to be boisterous along with a lack of strong parental discipline — means that young boys are relegated to special ed without their issues being addressed through other means. By the time the boys are in sixth grade, the problems have festered. After all, a student failing in math and missing more than 10 days of school a year has just a one-in-six chance of graduating from high school.

These stats can be seen throughout the nation. Over a period of four years, the enrollment of males versus females can reverse, from majority young men to majority female by senior year. The impact of this can be seen on America’s college campuses where young women are now outnumbering men — and in society at large.

All the young men — black, white, Latino, rich or poor — need to graduate. Addressing these academic failures will not only stem the dropout crisis, but also improve the lives of young women and society overall.

• RT @Eduflack: Bill would strip powers from local school councils http://bit.ly/cK33yY This suggests that perhaps Chicago should go all… #
• charter or fully consolidate mayoral control. #
• RT @oklahomanews: In OK, plan may expand #charterschools http://bit.ly/9pO5gg Mayors of Tulsa, OK City/indian tribes may get auth. #edreform #
• RT @bigswifty: To testing critics who criticize it on basis of some cheating http://nyti.ms/96HsJj Do we ban grades 2? http://bit.ly/9UbtXV #
• @bigswifty The answer to your question is “yes.” It’s not as if #FairTest care about rigor, standards or accountability. in reply to bigswifty #
• @KevinCarey focuses on Trinity Washington University and its mission of serving poor black/minority women on a modest budget #highered #
• U.S. News & World Report also gets a mention in Carey’s post. Just not a positive one. #
• RT @meristemstudio: RT @UrbanEducation: I invite ALL educators, parents to participate in #BlackEd on Thurs. @9pm. #edreform #

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Killing our seeds before they grow: Black America must stop this.

As an applied anthropologist in the D.C. suburb of Prince George’s County, Walter Dozier has spent much of his time addressing the high levels of underachievement and crime that have plagued that community’s neighborhoods. But after watching the spate of teen-on-teeen murders that have bloodied Chicago’s streets, Dozier wonders whether black communities in that city — and elsewhere — are ready to embrace education as the solution to ending such carnage. Here are his thoughts (thanks to Phillip Jackson of the Black Star Project):

It has been two months since the murder and funeral of Chicago teenager Derrion Albert. His violent death sparked a national outrage and generated intense international media attention. Albert is one of thousands of young black males whose loss of life has gone largely unchecked within the black community. Yet black youth violence alarm bells have been sounding for decades.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, homicide is the leading cause of death for the majority of black Americans between the ages of 10 and 24 years old. Further, research by Northeastern University shows that the number of homicides involving black male youth as perpetrators increased 43 percent between 2002 and 2007. Just as important, the number of black male youth involved as homicide victims increased 31 percent.For gun killings, the increase was even greater with a 54 percent increase for young black male victims and 47 percent increase for young black male perpetrators.

In Chicago, almost 70 students have been murdered in black communities, since the beginning of the 2007 school year. But this is not just a Chicago problem Two weeks after Albert’s death, in the Washington D.C. area, where I live, seventeen year-old Kenyetta D. Nicholson-Stanley was killed during an exchange of gunfire at the Edgewood Terrace housing complex while she sat on a bench. A week later, 15-year-old Davonta Artis and 18-year-old Daquan Tibbs, were gunned down not far away from where Nicholson-Stanley was killed. Artis was on his way home from a local middle school where he was reportedly an A-student. Three other teens were also wounded in what community members called a war-like shootout between rival neighborhood gangs.

In all three incidents, law enforcement officials and family members publicly pleaded for community assistance in identifying the attackers so they apprehended and brought to justice. In all three incidents police struggled to get witness support as community members refused to take a stand against the epidemic violence – in their own communities. Had it not been for the technological advances in visual media – cell phone cameras — Albert’s killers might still be unidentified.

So, with a generation of black youths attending candlelight vigils as a cultural way of life and make shift memorials unexceptional landmarks throughout many black communities, there is a disquieting absence of community call-to-action, a disquieting lack of effort to address the killing of young black males – unless the assailant is white. Then the call to unify against racism is unyielding.

Some community watchers say the complacency is a problematical mix of family breakdown and an engrained sense of hopelessness fueling violent episodes of self hatred. Still others cite a concentrated and misdirected focus on materialism and consumerism rather than on educational excellence. Education advocates say the failure to provide black children with a 21st Century education will only increase the rate of terror within black communities. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates 90 percent of new high-growth, high-wage jobs will require some level of postsecondary education.

Children without a quality high school education are hopelessly destined to the lowest possible quality of life imaginable in the United States. According to a recent report by Columbia University’s Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, reducing the high school dropout rate in half would yield $45 billion annually in new federal tax revenues or cost savings.

So we have now reached the “what now?” stage of the Derrion Albert tragedy. The media attention is fading, the family will be left to grieve alone and young black males continue to terrorize our communities while self-annihilating each other. The status quo approach to solving problems is not, and has not worked for years. Since the arrested development of thousands of young black males can no longer be singularly attributed to racism, new community survival strategies are critical to our survival. Blaming and complaining are not strategies; they are excuses. It is now time for a moratorium on excuses and a fundamental shift in thinking and action.

The problems of under-and unemployment are clearly related to educational deficits and too many black youths are turning to the criminal enterprise. In majority black communities across the nations the governance of school systems has rested in the hands of black leadership for years. Yet, the quality and direction of education remains in question as political, faith-based, business and community leaders are for the most part hopelessly uninvolved, uninformed and uncommitted to saving our children.

Our communities have gotten too comfortable with violence and underachievement.Without a committed and sustained effort to educate our children and rebuild our families, the permanent destruction of the black community is simply a matter of time.

As head of the Black Star Project, Phillip Jackson is often fighting a lonely battle to keep America’s black children in school and out of prison and trouble. These days, in his hometown of Chicago, it has become even harder. The city where “diploma dreams go to die”, has also seen hundreds of young students die inside and out of its public schools. In this piece, Jackson offers his own solutions for stemming youth violence for the long run.

Youth violence is a national issue. Since we began the Iraq war in 2003, an estimated 32,000 American youths lost their lives to violence — far more than the 4,349 U.S. soldiers who died in battle. Yet the United States treats youth violence as a nuisance, not as a war it wants to win.

We cannot fix the problems of children or schools in America without first fixing the problems of the adults in their lives and of the communities in which the children live. Anything else is pretending to fix the problem and is a community disservice!

So far, the most popular approaches to address youth violence have not made any significant nor long-term impact. More police merely militarizes and destabilizes communities. The other offering that haven’t worked includes: Stiffer sentencing for young offenders; direct intervention at the point of impending violence; vigils, peace rallies and peace marches through communities;  and prayers without concrete, supportive actions.

Meanwhile there are effective approaches cited by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that have been shown to reduce youth violence over time and produce long-term, lasting, positive results. Build strong families and communities and employ good parents as the chief agents to reduce youth violence. Teach young children ways to resolve conflict peacefully. Provide mentors to serve as guides and role models for positive youth behavior. Reduce social and economic causes of violence in young people’s environments. And ensure spiritual or character-based training for young children and reinforce that training throughout their early teen years.

In Chicago, the youth, themselves, are asking for more mentors, more parent involvement in their lives and more job and economic opportunities. Their requests parallel CDC’s recommendations to reduce violence. But these requests – and the solutions – are ignored. While government attempts to study, analyze and understand youth violence, the Black Star Project is implementing workable solutions in Chicago — ground zero for the war against youth violence.

Each day, the Black Star Project has 250 male and female volunteers who mentor youth on school days.  Since 1996, the Black Star Project has provided classroom-based mentoring to nearly 200,000 Chicago-area students. We also have 100 Peace Walkers who patrolled high-risk neighborhoods in Chicago this summer; 70 Parent University professors who have taught thousands of parents to be great parents since 2004 and 25 college coaches who have helped prepare thousands of elementary school students for college.

Through our Million Father March 2009, we organized 625,000 fathers in 500 cities across America to take their children back to school on the first day. These are the kinds of “armies of hope” that the federal government needs to win this war.

If we continue to address this problem with the current lack of resolve, including misdirected, piece-meal efforts with too-few resources — just as we lost the war in Vietnam, then we are destined for a resounding defeat in the war against youth violence on the streets of America.

The effort to eliminate youth violence commands a national response that includes national resources, a national infrastructure and national leadership. This effort must be comprehensive and coordinated across foundation, government, faith-based and community-based organizational lines. Many organizations such as The Black Star Project are working to restore order in chaotic and violence-ridden neighborhoods.  Our efforts are essential to eliminate violence, restore hope and reduce the need for militarizing our many troubled communities.

Our war to save the minds and spirits of our children is the most important war that America will ever fight.  Saving our children is difficult because of the “No Snitching” code-of-silence among our American youth, which has proved devastating and unacceptable in this war.  Yet our government’s “No Support” policy for organizations that work for long-term solutions to fix this problem of youth violence in American communities is inexcusable.  In fact, “No Support” is far, far worse than “No Snitching,” and our children know it!

At some point, Black America must say enough is enough when it comes to tolerating academic failure. The time must be now.

All the news inside — and outside — the dropout nation. Updated throughout the day (new items and updates are marked with an *):

• Bad instruction + Bad parenting = poor academic performance: How poorly did San Francisco’s black students in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade perform on the latest round of state tests? Reports the San Francisco Chronicle: “Special education students had slightly higher proficiency rates than black students in second-, third- and fourth-grade math as well as fourth-grade English.” No wonder why black middle class residents who can afford to move to Silicon Valley or to cities with better-performing school systems, do so. Educational genocide at work, dear folks. And this must stop.
• Meet one of L.A. Unified’s worst dropout factories: Just north of Compton and near the famed Hancock Park, Jefferson High School has been blessed with a beautiful Art Deco building and an alumni list that includes diplomat extraordinaire Ralph Bunch, dance impresario Alvin Ailey and saxophonist Dexter Gordon. But the school has become more notorious for schoolyard brawls, being at the center of the battle between the district and charter school outfit Green Dot schools (which opened five charter schools surrounding Jefferson in response to parent complaints about the school) and pervasive academic failure. And during the 2006-07 school year, it has garnered the status of being one of the state’s worst dropout factories, according to the Associated Press. Six out of every ten freshmen leave school without a sheepskin, making it the worst-performing dropout factory among the academic roach motels run by L.A. Unified.
• Public school choice? What public school choice*: Parents and students in Washington, D.C.’s woeful public schools just got notices that they qualify for the public school choice option under No Child, by which they can transfer from one failing school to a better one. But as the Washington Post reports, the parents already know that the choices they face in the school system are grim to none. And the notifications come out so late that the options aren’t available at all. As I’ve mentioned last week, public school choice doesn’t exist for most parents and students in any form.
• Building for nothing: Back in 2001, Milwaukee Public Schools embarked on a $102 million building spree in order to create local schools and in order to eschew the more destructive elements of school busing. This despite the fact that the district, like so many urban systems, has seen three decades of declining enrollment. The results, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in a three-part series, is, well, predictable: Students are still being bused to schools outside their respective neighborhoods; new additions and old buildings are sitting half-empty or — for the shame of the district — being rented out to private schools. And combo efforts such as building a church alongside another public school has gone awry, with both students and parishioners taking the hit.
• The Milwaukee schools experience offers another reason for a new model: Over the past three years, I’ve floated something I call the Hollywood model for public education under which local school districts would move from becoming operators of schools and masters of academic instruction — a job which many people argue (and the evidence suggests), they don’t do so well — to becoming a dormitory authority similar to the state agency used in New York state to build colleges. Similar to the major motion picture studios (which rarely produce films, but focus on distribution and finance), school district would construct buildings, provide school lunch services and handle transportation services on behalf of public charter schools and private schools(none of which have the scale to do those jobs efficiently). The charter schools and private schools would become, essentially, become like small-shingle Hollywood studios, handling the instructional work that districts used to do. This embraces public education as being a system of financing the best options for every student, no matter their race or income, while maximizing the public dollars that are in place. The reality is that public school districts are actually pretty good in constructing buildings and moving people around, not so good at academic instruction or data systems. A Hollywood model of education may not be such a bad idea after all.
• Speaking of building: Public school officials in New Orleans plans on building 28 new school buildings while selling off or otherwise jettisoning 50 others as part of a $685 million plan funded by FEMA funds, according to the Times-Picayune. The key part of the plan: A separate authority that would essentially build and manage the buildings on behalf of both the existing traditional public school system, the Recovery District of charters and traditional public schools run by the state and other entities. Essentially, this could be the Hollywood model at work — if the penchant of officials for corruption and sleaze  doesn’t trump the goal of efficient building.
• Better middle schools, New York style: The Daily News offers some suggestions on middle schools that aren’t “middle of the pack.” Check it out.
• A challenge*: Jay Greene asks the Broader, Bolder crowd to put their words to practice by coming up with a test model of their proposed community school concept. Save for Leo Casey’s response and a small missive from Lawrence Mishel, no response has been forthcoming from the group in response to other criticisms of their anti-accountability plan.
• From my end*, Broader, Bolder is right to note that a better approach to the current public welfare system — one that offers some form of wrap-around help for families in need — is probably needed for the children coming out of poverty-minded homes. But schools cannot abdicate their responsibility for educating these children and preparing them for higher education and life. Good teachers can overcome other socioeconomic problems. But good instruction and rigorous curricula must first be provided by schools in order for this to happen.
• And feel free* to check out my latest piece for The American Spectator, this time, on how Reason magazine’s rating of Chicago as the most nanny-statelike city in America doesn’t fully consider all the problems of the City of Broad Shoulders. For most people, the Second City’s status as first in the nation when it comes to corruption — along with its underperforming schools — is far more disconcerting than its anti-liberty coddling and toddling.

Let me note three things of things. The first: The list doesn’t include charter schools such as DC Prep, which are also using a good number of H-1B students. The second: It doesn’t include employment agencies that may be employing H-1B teachers on behalf of districts such as Global Teachers Research. The latter would add plenty more to the number of foreign teachers employed by the nation’s public school systems. And I didn’t add all the schools with one or two H-1B teachers for the sake of brevity.