Male/female high school dropout ratios show huge gap

By Men's Activism News | Source | March 11, 2010

Story here. Admittedly, this is just one city, and one that has been under great educational distress for some time. But it does reflect the larger trend: girls are beating boys solidly in terms of graduation, and not by a mere couple of percentage points but by solid margins. They are also clobbering boys in terms of grade performance as well, but this is hardly news. And yet feminists still insist there is no boys' education crisis. Excerpt:

'The state education department released graduation rates this week for all high schools and school districts across New York.

Rochester's four-year graduation rate dropped from 52-percent to 46-percent. News 10 NBC wanted to know how the numbers break down for male students and female students.

The city school district today released those numbers. Fifty-two-percent of girls graduate on time while only 39-percent of boys graduate on time.

Dropout numbers are also revealing. According to state figures for the 2008-09 school year, more male students dropped out than female students. Twenty-nine-percent of girls dropped out, while 35-percent of boys did.

Rochester Mayor Bob Duffy is seeking approval in Albany for a City Hall takeover of city schools. City Hall contributes $119-million annually in property tax revenue to the schools. He has a plan to keep boys and girls in school to graduate. "I think first of all you have to meet them where they're at. And one of the things, making sure they are in school," said Duffy.'

39/52 = .75. Boys this past year in Rochester graduated from high school at 75% the rate of girls. For every 4 girls graduating, 3 boys are doing the same.

And the overall numbers are abysmal. Forty-six percent. It's unfathomable to me. I grew up in a small town where people were expected, generally, just to make it out of high school. The graduation rate was nonetheless solidly above 90%, closer to 95%, consistently across years. And you could count on two hands and two feet the number of people with degrees beyond high school in that town, population 5,000. Nonetheless, the H.S. graduation rates were that high. (I'll tell you what, too, people were very slow to get divorced when I was growing up, and despite the fact that sounds like I am referring to 1867, it was not that long ago; it was the 1970s and early '80s. You could safely assume any kid in your school had mom and dad, both living under the same roof.) Now look at what things have come to. These numbers are consistent with what I'd expect to see from a second-world country.