What’s the Real High School Dropout Rate?
In 2008, the Current Population Survey — a monthly survey conducted by the Census Bureau — placed the high school dropout rate of young black men at 13.5 percent — evidence of a decline in the black-white gap in high school completion over the past few decades.
According to Pettit, however, if prison inmates are included in those statistics, the nationwide high school dropout rate among young Black men for that year would climb to 19 percent — 40 percent higher than conventional estimates suggest.
Pettit found that 60 percent of Black male dropouts can expect to be imprisoned at some point in their lives, while only 10 percent of white male dropouts can expect the same.
What’s the Real Education Gap?
That would have meant that there has been no improvement in the gap in high school graduation rates between white and Black male students since the early 1990s. On the contrary, the gap in high school completion has hovered close to 11 percentage points for most of the past 20 years.
