Woo-hoo! My old junior high has the highest dropout rate in the city! (Let's just ignore the fact that allowing dropout at that age is illegal, shall we? Let's shall.)
Not a surprise, really. I would imagine that when the figures finally do come in for the high schools, me alma mater (can you say that about a high school?) will be one of the three leaders in the city in dropout rate. (The top three -- or bottom three, depending on how you look at it -- absent a drastic shift in the city's income distribution, will be Albuquerque HS, Valley HS and Rio Grande HS. AHS drew from six of the city's then-eight designated poverty-level districts, Valley drew from three, and Rio Grande drew from either three or five -- I don't remember which. When you've got a very poor population, you get a high dropout rate. Any road, I'm sure that the city has more designated poverty areas now.)
It shouldn't surprise anyone, really. I'm not sure about the junior high level, but when I graduated, i was officially 35th of a class of 335 ... of which 187 actually received diplomas. Near 50% attrition rate, there. From what I understand, there's no reason to assume that things have gotten significantly better.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!