Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 105

CHAPTER 3
Other countries caught up, and many eventually surpassed us. Now, the U.S. secondary
school completion rate is ranked 22 out of 27 high-income countries.21 While it may have
been inevitable that other countries would catch up with the United States, the long plateau
of no improvements in U.S. graduation rates was not inevitable.
Despite the overall improvement in graduation rates, there are still too many schools
where the odds are stacked against
students. These are schools where
Figure 3.4 Dropouts as a Percent of 16-24 Year Olds (2007)
a 40 percent dropout rate, or
worse, is considered the norm.22
30%
When a school has a large share of
students at risk of dropping out, it
27.5%
25
undermines the quality of education for all students in the school.
20
21.0%
Based on patterns of inequity in
education, it is not surprising that
15
dropout rates are highest in lowincome communities. Students of
12.2%
10
10.7%
color are the most affected since
at-risk white students are more
5
likely to be integrated into schools
in middle-class communities.23
0
More than half a century after
White
Black
Hispanic
Other
Brown vs. Board of Education
ended “separate but equal,” we find
Figure 3.5 Number of Dropouts 16-24 Years Old by Race (2007)
that segregation in U.S. schools
23,355,067
is increasing. The share of black
Total 16-24 Year Olds
students attending schools that
10,000,000
are more than 90 percent minority
Total Dropouts by Race
grew from 34 percent in 1989 to
8,000,000
39 percent in 2007. Low-income
immigrant Hispanic children are
6,765,995
6,000,000
also concentrated in schools with
5,535,350
higher percentages of minorities.
Segregation by income level is
4,000,000
also increasing: In 1989, black students attended schools in which an
2,849,809
2,839,900
2,000,000
average of 43 percent of their class1,858,498
1,161,343
mates was low-income; by 2007, this
304,234
figure had risen to 59 percent.24
0
White
Black
Hispanic
Other
The absolute number of white students who drop out is larger, but the
percentages of black and Hispanic
Source: Northeastern University - Center for Labor Market Studies and Alternative Schools
students who drop out are higher.
Network in Chicago (2009), “Left behind in America : the nation’s dropout crisis.”
See Figure 3.4 and 3.5.
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