School Districts with High Minority Populations Have Lower Graduation Rates

The national high school graduation rate increased by three percent – from 72 to 75 percent – between 2001 and 2008, according to a report by America’s Promise Alliance.
However, this is not as good as it sounds – at least for students who live in high-poverty urban districts. The report discovered that these districts have graduation rates below the national average.
What are these “high-poverty urban districts”?
“One county type stands out in sharpest relief… the counties with large African American populations called Minority Central, set heavily in the nation’s southeast,” according to a report by Patchwork National, a PBS-affiliated reporting project. “Those counties hold only about 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, but they hold more than 15 percent of the high schools with the highest dropout rates.”

Other areas that are not performing as well as the national average include those with large Native American populations and industrial metropolis counties.
The maps below shows the lowest and highest performing school districts in the nation:

Lowest Performing Schools by County

Highest Performing School by County

The question is: are the students failing the school or is it the other way around? Do you think this trend is caused by socio-cultural norms among the minority groups who live in these areas? Or do you think the cause of the problem could be that the schools themselves are not setting the students up for success? Share your thoughts and opinions with us below!
Via The Huffington Post