Black graduation rates lag far behind rate of white students

Cobb: 67.7 percent

DeKalb: 58.9 percent

Fulton: 63.3 percent

Gwinnett: 68 percent

Source: Georgia Department of Education

A trio of school districts in metro Atlanta – DeKalb, Atlanta Public Schools and Clayton – are graduating fewer than six in 10 black students, a stunning reality that flies in the face of the area’s reputation as a mecca of black accomplishment and affluence.

Among DeKalb, APS, Clayton, Fulton, Gwinnett and Cobb, no district has a black four-year graduation rate above Gwinnett’s 68 percent. Gwinnett’s black graduation rate is lower than the state’s overall graduate rate of 71.5 percent and far lower than the 79 percent of white Georgia students who graduate in four years. And Georgia’s overall graduation rate is among the lowest in the nation.

At least a dozen schools in the area have black graduation rates below 50 percent. Those include Ronald E. McNair High in DeKalb, which was named to honor a black physicist and astronaut but has a black graduation rate of 48.3 percent. Benjamin Banneker High in Fulton, which was named after an 18th-century black scientist, has a black graduation rate of 42.5 percent.

Rather than focus on those schools, district press statements accompanying the release of the graduation rates noted progress. There has been progress in overall and black graduation rates. As low as black graduation rates are in 2013, they are higher than they were the year before for most metro Atlanta districts and for the state.

“We have closed the achievement gap between black students and white students in most areas, which is an important indicator and an encouragement,” said Matt Cardoza, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Education, “but there’s still plenty of work to do to eliminate the gap.”

Districts are taking a range of actions to improve the graduation rates of all students.

APS spokeswoman Kimberly Willis Green said the district has launched “a specific initiative that encourages graduation coaches to collaborate with school counselors, social workers and registrars to identify students who require intervention based on risk factors, such as attendance, behavior, coursework, and lack of course credits.”

Each middle and high school in the district has a graduation coach, she said.

DeKalb has assigned graduation coaches to high schools with the lowest graduation rates. The district is also holding information sessions on Saturdays to not only encourage more parental involvement but to help them determine how to get involved.

“You can encourage it, and you can help parents understand the importance of it,” DeKalb Superintendent Michael Thurmond said.

Thurmond recalled that his father was determined to be involved in the education of his son, despite the fact that the older man could not read or write. Thurmond said he was in middle school by the time he learned his father could not read or write.

“My dad didn’t want his son to grow up to be a sharecropper,” Thurmond said, remembering how his father traveled to see him perform in the school band and was a fixture at PTA functions.

Thurmond said his own experience and the experience of leading a school district has hammered home a sobering point: Teachers and principals can only do so much.

“The greatest influence on a child is their parents,” he said. “The most important thing a parent can do is ask, ‘How was school today?’ It’s being present and accountable.”

Thurmond, who is black, said he wants to see improvements across the board in graduation rates. He added that a focus on low black graduation rates is misleading.

“It’s not just a racial issue,” Thurmond said. “Something else is going on.”

And that something else, Thurmond said, is poverty.

Indeed, figures from the Georgia Department of Education show that the graduation rates of poor students of all races, like black graduation rates, are far lower than the state rate.

While 64 percent of black students in Georgia graduate within four years, 63.4 percent of poor students graduate within four years.

The black graduation rate in APS is 56.4 percent; for poor students, the rate is 57.7 percent. In DeKalb, nearly 59 percent of black students and 55 percent of poor students graduate within four years. And in Clayton, 56.6 percent of black students graduate within four years while 54.7 percent of poor students graduate within four years.

Black residents in Georgia are far more likely to be poor than white residents. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that, from 2007 through 2011, 11.6 percent of white residents were below the poverty level. Nearly 25 percent of black residents were below the poverty level during that time.

Education officials say poverty presents multiple challenges to learning and achievement. Hunger, limited parental involvement and an absence of successful role models are all factors that have an impact on a poor student’s academic performance.

Yet poverty alone isn’t always a barrier to achievement.

At DeKalb’s Arabia Mountain High, with a student population that is 98 percent black and where 54 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch, the four-year graduation rate stands at 97 percent.

Arabia Mountain is a specialty school. Students must apply for acceptance and maintain a 3.0 grade-point average to remain enrolled. The school has 1,256 students.

Parental involvement isn’t just hoped for; it’s mandated.

“We mandate 10 hours (per year) that they have to do, but our parents are there regardless,” said Rodney Swanson, Arabia Mountain’s principal. “The parental involvement is extreme.”

Arabia Mountain’s student body president, Juwan Thompson, said there is peer pressure at the school. But the pressure is to keep up with high-achieving peers, not to buy into the belief that academic success is the purview of white students.

“It’s really challenging,” Thompson said of the coursework at the school. “I figured I’d have to deal with it now or deal with it later. I could have taken an easier path, or I could step up to the plate.”

Thompson, who brought the idea of attending Arabia Mountain to his parents, hopes to become a supply chain manager. His father, a chef, and his mother, a human resources manager, are both involved in his education. Neither attended college, but Thompson said they expect their son to reach that goal.

Graduating from high school this spring is a foregone conclusion for Thompson, who is black.

He has a full scholarship to attend Syracuse University in Upstate New York.