No Child Left Behind

I read an article this morning containing alarming statistics in relation to the graduation rate of the Memphis City school system. It seems that the NCLB program has boasted some gains over the past few years but has recently taken a turn for the worse.

MCS Graduation Rates
2005: 66.3 percent
2006: 67.2 percent
2007: 69.6 percent
2008: 66.9 percent

As with any standard curve or average, some of the schools were further below these dismal figures.

Graduation rates and the percentage of decline since last year.
Cordova: 73.8 (-14.4)
Fairley: 51.4 (-17.9)
Manassas: 50.8 (-13.5)
Raleigh Egypt: 69.5 (-10.9)
Ridgeway: 82.5 (-8.8)
Trezevant: 56.6 (-7.1)
Wooddale: 62.4 (-8.6)

As usual, these figures are shocking but they do not allow you to appreciate the real story. There is no emotion involved with numbers posted on a blog or printed in a newspaper. Does a graduation rate dropping almost 18% shock you? It shouldn’t because numbers are meaningless. It’s what the numbers represent that should cause you to move up to the front car on the emotional roller coaster. Let’s take a moment and translate these meaningless numbers into a language we of substance.

Take a look at this class picture.




All of these kids will fail to make it out of the Memphis City School system.












So…

· Which one will not be denied that entry level job that they desperately need?
· Which one will die as a result of a drug or alcohol addiction?
· Which one will have or abort an unplanned pregnancy because they feel trapped?
· Which one will spend most of their adult life in prison?


They will all to have a long difficult life ahead of them and they will not have even reached adulthood at the onset of this hardship.

We have failed these kids…and 1400 other class pictures filled with other children. These children are real; they are not numbers. If you have children, try to imagine that your child will be among the 36,410 out of the 110,000 that will not make it to the graduation stage. This is unacceptable.

Our system is broken, how do we fix it?