How School Choice Benefits The Urban Poor

Article Published in the Howard University Law Journal

One-fourth of all American children entering the ninth grade fail to graduate from high school.1 That is bad enough, but a staggering 50% of all minority kids who enter ninth grade do not graduate.2 As Colorado education philanthropist Steve Schuck has observed, “[these] are appalling statistics.”3 An equally horrendous set of outcome data from the primary grades suggests that the fate of children who have suffered from the double whammy of racial discrimination and poverty often is sealed early. The 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that 63% of African-American and 58% of Hispanic fourth-graders scored below a minimal “basic” level in reading.4 (The failing rate for U.S. fourth-graders as a whole was 37%). Urban poverty deals many of these children a losing hand: 60% of children from homes below the poverty level, and 47% of all urban pupils, cannot read at this bare “basic” level.5

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