Black males more likely to graduate in NC
September 25, 2012 - Outcomes for black males are improving too slowly, a newly released national report cautions, but it ranks North Carolina as having the highest graduation rate for black males of states with large black enrollments.
The report, The Urgency of Now, estimated the 2010 graduation rate for black males in North Carolina at 58 percent, compared to 52 percent for the nation as a whole. North Carolina's graduation rate was higher than six other states with enrollments of black males exceeding 200,000 in the 2009-10 school year: California (56 percent graduation rate), Texas (53 percent), Georgia (49 percent), Florida (47 percent), Illinois (47 percent), New York (37 percent).
[For the class of 2012, black males had a graduation rate of 68.1 percent, according to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. To allow for comparisons among states, The Urgency of Now report used estimates comparing numbers of graduates with numbers of 9th graders four years earlier. North Carolina tracks individual students to calculate a "cohort" graduation rate.]
North Carolina has made progress since a similar report four years ago put the black male graduation rate for the class of 2006 at 49 percent. The gap between black and white males has narrowed from 19 percentage points to 13 points during the last four years.
The report, from the Schott Foundation for Public Education, warns that the nation is making only slow progress in improving outcomes for both black and Hispanic males, who had a graduation rate nationally of 58 percent and 50 percent in North Carolina.
The gap between black and white male graduation rates nationally has narrowed by only three points over the last 10 years, the report says, from 29 percentage points to 26 points.
"At this rate of progress, with no "large scale" systemic intervention, it would take another 50 years to close the graduation gap between black males and their white male counterparts," Schott President John H. Jackson says in the report.
The report ranks two North Carolina districts -- Cumberland and Guilford counties -- among the top five large districts in the nation for graduation rates for black males. Cumberland's rate for 2010 was 68 percent, according to the report, with a 1-point gap; Guilford's was 67 percent, with a 13-point gap.
