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Montgomery County Council member Craig L. Rice wants answers from the school board about why black male students are still lagging behind their peers when it comes to academic performance.
At a lunch meeting Tuesday between the council and board, Rice, who is black, asked why more has not been done to address the problem.
Board Vice President Christopher S. Barclay (D-Dist. 4) of Takoma Park, who is also black, responded by saying that he is focused on the black male graduation rate, which in 2010 was 73.6 percent, according to state data, compared to the school system’s overall 86.2 percent graduation rate. White males, by contrast, graduated at a 92.7 percent rate, but Hispanic males fared worst among male students at 69.1 percent.
Rice (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown appeared to brush this off and reiterated his concern by saying, “We’re not doing anything.”
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Those statistics are reeeeally misleading. I would like to see the raw data. Break that down by school. The high schools supporting richer neighborhoods (e.g. Whitman, Churchill, Wooten, Quince Orchard) have smaller minority populations than than the poorer (e.g. Wheaton, Kennedy, Einstein, Springbrook). My money is on the minorities being relatively compatitable from school to school in the richer vs the poorer where the differences may begin to grow. At that point other dynamics (other than the school system) are going to begin to effect student/grades. Higher divorce rate, lower parental education, higher drug use, and above all, fewer resources per family to help their kid. Cultural differences are also huge. In other words, at that point you can't get blood from a stone. Their comes a point when the school system is only going to have so much of an effect on kids. The family structure plays a lot bigger role in a kids success than I think a lot of folks realize or are willing to admit. It isn't a race issue, it is a social/economic issue that the best school system isn't going to fix.
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