47% of High School Students Drop Out

Forty-seven percent of all students entering New York City’s high schools drop out. At Thomas Jefferson High School – in Brownsville – there are 646 9th graders. In 12th grade, there are only 113 students. At Franklin K. Lane – in Harlem - where just 2.3 percent of graduates earned a Regents diploma in 2003 – there are 1,509 9th graders but only 315 12th graders. At Brandeis High – on Manhattan’s west side – there are 1,001 students in 9th grade, 279 in 12th grade. At Norman Thomas – in midtown Manhattan – there are 996 students in 9th grade, 214 in 12th grade.

You know what will happen to those kids who have faded away from school. Most will face monumental hurdles in this society – barriers to a decent job, to being able to support a family, to being a part of the community.

A Community Service Society report released last month, entitled Out of School, Out of Work…Out of Luck? New York City’s Disconnected Youth (PDF), tracked trends in school enrollment and employment efforts of young people since the late 1980’s. We found that black and Latino youth – age 16 to 24 - were more than twice as likely to be out of school and out of work than white youth - disengaged from any framework that would provide them with a future.

In total, 170,000 of New York City’s young people find themselves in this situation. 170,000 young people - that’s a population larger than Syracuse, New York or Hartford, Connecticut.

A 2004 CSS report revealed that nearly one-half of black men in New York City were without a job in the previous year. There is a direct connection between and the high numbers of New York’s black and Latino young males who are neither in school nor in the labor market and the low rates of jobholding among the city’s black and Latino men.

How well young people are able to move from adolescence to adulthood - if they are successful in finishing high school, if they go on to higher education or a promising first job - can affect their lives for many years.

Giving Up on the System

But the system does not connect to the needs of students. The state sets high standards for academic success and a Regents diploma. But the schools don’t provide the instruction necessary for students to achieve those standards. The result is a large portion of the student population that gives up on the school system.

There is a largely untapped resource that could help save many young people who are uninterested in academics and, consequently, unprepared for most jobs in the new economy.

In our recent survey of low-income New Yorkers, I was most surprised to see that more than nine out of 10 respondents support vocational programs in high schools. I was brought up on the notion that vocational education was something to be rejected. During my youth, it was where poor, mostly black students were pointed as their only hope of earning a living.

Times have changed in terms of career preparation. The transformation of the labor market from industrial trades to the new and emerging technology has created a new dynamic. We need to invest in a curriculum that embraces the new economy in order to reach those students who desire to immediately enter the labor market.

I’m talking about providing highly sophisticated instruction that leads to well-paid jobs. This is already common in Europe; students obtain a technical diploma, get a job, and in time seek a university degree. It is simply a matter of timing.

Any way we set it up, the result must be that students get the education and skills they need to get and keep a job and advance in a family-supporting career. This will also help to build a workforce that meets the demands of a changing economy.

A Dual Approach

We should devise a dual approach to educating young people. Students in the early grades must have access to gifted programs and the solid academic instruction that can send them on their way to a Regents diploma and beyond. For those students in secondary schools, already within striking distance of graduating – who have not been prepared or are not presently interested in a college education – we should develop a curriculum that prepares them for well-paying jobs after they leave school.

We are talking about a large percentage of our young people, the future of our communities. This is a crisis – one that needs our urgent attention.

Read CSS’s reports on disconnected youth and black male joblessness (PDF), as well as the findings of our annual survey of low-income New Yorkers (PDF).

From the New York Amsterdam News
February 24 - March 2, 2005