While the nation’s graduation rate, including that of black and Latino males, has continued to grow, the gap between black males and their white peers has widened, according to a report released last week by the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
Since the Cambridge, Mass.-based foundation’s last report on the state of public education for black males, in 2012, the gap between the four-year graduation rate for black males and white males widened from 19 percentage points in the 2009-10 school year to 21 points in the 2012-13 year. For Latinos, the gap shrank to 15 percentage points, from 20, during that period.
The national graduation rate was 59 percent for black males, 65 percent for Latinos, and 80 percent for white males for the 2012-13 school year, according to the report. Particularly striking was Detroit, where only 20 percent of black males graduated on time in 2011-12.
The report provides state-by-state graduation rates for all three of those racial or ethnic groups, and district-level statistics for blacks and whites in 50 school systems where the black male enrollment exceeds 10,000.
