Michigan’s black/white male education gap is worst in nation

 

African-American males in Michigan have the lowest high school graduation rate in the country — 33 percent, compared to 74 percent for white males in the state, U-M researchers say.

Moreover, African-American female college students nationwide now outnumber black men in college, 2-1.

While a number of studies have examined Michigan’s college attainment and high school graduation rates, the numbers from U-M’s Black Male Project show the disparities are “alarming” when progress is measured comparing males with females, says Larry Rowley, assistant professor of higher education and Afroamerican and African studies.

“Researchers, policymakers and educators increasingly acknowledge that low K-12 academic performance, high school completion and higher education participation levels for African-American males represent a national crisis,” Rowley says. “National data reveal that African-American male students are underperforming at alarming rates across the K-12 educational pipeline as well as in their college attendance and completion rates.”

Rowley is based at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education and holds a joint appointment at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies.

“This is not an intellectual exercise for me. This is personal,” says Rowley, who was orphaned as a child and regularly worries about opportunities and challenges that will face his own young son now attending Ypsilanti Public Schools, one of the districts examined in the research.

Source: The University Record Online, 1/11/2010