A report (PDF) by the America's Promise Alliance shows that urban students are graduating from high school at alarmingly low rates. According to the report, "Only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the principal school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma." The report covers the country's 50 largest cities and documents a distinct advantage of suburban students over urban dwellers. For example, in Baltimore's metropolitan area, only 34.6 percent of students in urban districts who entered high school in 2003 graduated, while 81.5 percent their suburban Baltimore peers finished--a gap of 47 percent. Even worse: fewer than one in four students finishes high school in the Detroit City School District.

Other districts ranking at the bottom of the list are: Dallas ISD, Minneapolis Public Schools, Columbus Public Schools, Baltimore City Public School System, Cleveland Municipal City School District, and Indianapolis Public Schools, all of which had graduation rates of less than 45 percent. My hometown, Long Beach, California--which numbers among the largest 50 cities nationwide--boasts a graduation rate of 63.5 percent--woohoo. More disturbing is the gap in achievement between African-American students and their highest-achieving peers in the district: graduation rates for African-American students hovered at 56.6 percent in 1995, compared to 83.3 percent for their Asian-American peers. (It must be noted that the Long Beach Unified School District was just recently nominated for the fourth time for the Broad Prize for Urban Education, which recognizes improvement in student retention and achievement.)

On the Red County (Grassroots Politics from the Center-Right) blog, Teresa Shuff Trujillo admits she wasn't surprised at the news, but unlike other commentators, she refuses to blame the failure solely on leftist political agendas:

It is easy to blame the liberal left for the state of today's public education. It is also foolish to do so. There is just too much at stake to continue to place responsibility, or blame, on the shoulders of the teachers, teachers unions, school boards, teacher tenure, elected officials, teachers' colleges, and the un-informed masses. This problem exists because the conservatives abandoned the education high ground to the liberal left.

Trujillo also provides this sobering statistic for a nation that assumes (or at least wishes) its children will all be solidly middle class:

There are over 15 million high school students in this country, but only 3.9 million seats at 1308 degree granting institutions recognized by the US Department of Education. The reality is that there is only one seat for every four students at a university.

Kintlalake is even less optimistic about the country's future:

For a moment, try to wrap your brain around the fact that fully 75% of that city's 18-year-olds enter society without a high-school education. Nationally, 40% of the city kids you meet are -- or will be -- high-school dropouts.

I don't care to join the hand-wringing over the reasons why this is so, nor am I interested in discussing solutions. Explanations, however plausible, are pointless; proposals, however laudable, are futile.

To put a fine point on my pessimism, I believe that our nation is looking at a future dominated by handout-hungry Americans. Right now these parasites have us pinned down; soon, I predict, we'll be overrun.

I have no confidence in our ability to deny entitlements to the undeserving. I don't believe that we have the national will to overhaul our education system.

Until parents and families -- not schools -- get about the business of preparing children for life, this country has no shot at a better future.

The blogger luvrte66 blames U.S. cultural attitudes about education:

'm amazed at some of the attitudes I encounter. I've heard people say that their kids don't need to get some kind of "fancy" degree. Ain't nothing "fancy" about it, it's pretty much a necessity in today's world and competitive economy. Ken and I have actually been ridiculed for "putting on airs" because we have college degrees. Are you kidding me? (Of course, such an ignorant remark only serves to prove the ignorance of those who issue it.) I understand that not everyone was able to attend college. (I like the idea of student loans for college being forgiven for community or national service. That's a win-win situation.) There's nothing wrong with that, and there are many who have lucrative jobs and successful lives and careers without one. But anyone with kids now simply must recognize that their kids have to get a higher education. It's a competitive world, and America is not keeping up. We are beginning to lag seriously behind in science and technology, and this can't continue. There needs to be a serious paradigm shift, and the first step is to lose that narrow-minded and short-sighted attitude that a college degree doesn't matter, especially for our country's children. In the current atmosphere and global economy, it matters a lot. Our future may depend upon it.

As a child of retired public high school teachers and the niece of public school administrators, I have to admit I'm not among the "blame the teachers and administrators" crowd. Last weekend, I was talking with my uncle, a former high school principal iwho now runs a vocational education program for the district. His latest idea--which I think is brilliant--is to require high schools to take ownership of 9th-grade students. Taking my own life as an example: at my 9th-grade orientation, the vice principal of the high school told us, "Look to your left, look to your right; one of those students won't be here when you graduate." (Cheery, no? But true!)

Under his plan, high schools or school districts would be required to track their 9th graders through age 18 and beyond, no matter where those students actually finished (or didn't finish) high school. For example, a student who attended my high school in 9th grade and then transferred to High School B for 10th and 11th grade before moving to another school district, would be "owned" by my high school. It wouldn't necessarily be my high school's fault if the student, who attended for only one year, dropped out or was otherwise unsuccessful, but the school would be the starting point from which the student was tracked. Of course, the details are fuzzy, but imagine a system where the data was rich enough that we could determine in exactly which grades--and at what schools--students most struggle. We could then focus our retention resources on, say, 10th-grade Latino students at High School A, or 11th-grade white students with single working-class parents at High School B, or 9th-grade African-American students at High School C. If we learn that Pacific Islander students are most likely to graduate from high school if they remain in the same school for all four years, then we could initiate programs that make it easier for those students to remain at a single school during that period.

Additionally, we might learn that students from High School C, which is located in an urban neighborhood with two hospitals as well as several clinics, are likely to be drawn into lower-paying jobs in health care facilities, we could focus our vocational resources on channeling these students into higher-paid, and higher-prestige, medical support positions, as well as into college, nursing programs, and medical school.

The overall goal of his plan, of course, is to make districts responsible for gathering data on their students during and beyond high school. Do all students who want a career-track job get one within x years of graduation?

What do you think retention programs should look like? And is high school too late a time to start? I remember one of my African-American students at the University of Iowa--a very bright kid from Flint, Michigan--telling me that he hadn't finished reading a book since 8th grade. So do we start retention efforts in middle school? In 3rd grade? In 5th? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks helps university faculty improve their teaching. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.