Step One: Call It Out

Education has been labeled the “civil rights issue of our time.” Dropout factories––high schools where no more than 60% of the students that start as freshmen make it to their senior year––has become a common-day term. These low-performing public schools tend to be in the poorest zip codes across our country. The negative impacts of poverty on the health and education of students is well documented, mostly affecting kids of color who tend to live in lower-income communities.

I am pleased that the President's FY14 Budget addresses the student loan crisis in our country. From leading the world into the age of democracy to spearheading the technological revolution, America has always been at the forefront of greatness. 

Although boys and girls who drop out of high school sometimes do so for similar reasons, there are also some clear gender differences in what drives them to drop out. If we are to make progress in supporting all students to graduate, we need to understand these different causes for boys and for girls, and create solutions tailored to anticipate, prevent and respond to them.

Graduation from high school is not only a rite of passage, it is the ticket to economic prosperity and quality of life. The formula is simple: High school graduates are more employable, healthier and more likely to have health insurance, all of which positively contribute to our economy.

But here’s the flip side of that formula: New graduation data show glaring achievement gaps for students of color and economically disadvantaged students.

As a father, my heart breaks.

The starting five of the University of Kentucky basketball team - the 2012 NCAA champions - announced earlier this month that they're leaving college to go pro. It happens every year in the wake of March Madness, but as an African-American father, I feel my heart crack a little.

I recently hosted an education event in which I invited Martha J. Kanter, Under Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, and Dennis M. Walcott, Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, at Frederick Douglass Academy, my alma mater, in Harlem.

In most states, top-ranked high school seniors are shoo-ins to attend their local state universities. But that’s not how it goes in New York these days. In one recent, glaring case, the valedictorian of a rural school district outside Rochester was rejected by a nearby State University of New York campus — not because her grades were too low, but because her high school didn’t offer the courses needed to compete for college admission.

Such stories are becoming increasingly common across New York State.