Black-male dropout rate lamented

Mark Waller:

African-American boys in Jefferson Parish public schools are falling far behind other demographic groups in academics, Superintendent Diane Roussel said Wednesday.

In a speech to the Jefferson Chamber of Commerce, Roussel said a 12-member committee of educators has been studying the disparity and could issue findings and recommendations during a training session for principals in August.

"Jefferson Parish's African-American male students drop out of school at a rate more than three times that of other students," Roussel said in a speech that otherwise amounted to an overview of Louisiana's second-largest public school system. "A generation of young men is left with little prospect for a future that an education can provide. We must bridge that achievement gap."

Black students, both boys and girls, made up Jefferson Parish's lowest-performing racial group in 2004, the most recent year for which detailed statistics are available under Louisiana's school accountability program.

Because some minorities nationally have long lagged other groups, federal reforms now push schools to track and raise test scores not only for the overall student population but also for different ethnic, economic, English-proficiency and disability groups. But Roussel said the Jefferson committee is breaking down the numbers even further, by gender, and that the results for black male students look particularly startling.

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