Graduation Rates in Cleveland
Aired November 20, 2003

WVIZ-PBS and WCPN ideastream is teaming up with the Plain Dealer to present a new project called Tomorrow’s Promise – Helping Children Left Behind. It was organized this past summer after the Plain Dealer published a series of articles on major challenges facing our youth. Tomorrow’s Promise begins with a focus on graduation rates: Why is it a bigger problem here than in some other areas, and what’s being done to keep kids from dropping out? ideastream’s Bill Rice reports.

  

Jaquiline Black teaches home economics at john F. Kennedy High School on Cleveland’s east side. The six teens in her class are all girls. All are either pregnant or mothers already.

Black is teaching these girls some basic skills they’ll need to take on the challenges of parenthood. Her for-credit class is part of the state-supported GRADS Program.

Jaquiline Black: Graduation, Reality and Dual-Role Skills. Quite a mouthful.

Black says it’s tough enough for teens just trying to maneuver the challenges of adolescence. Providing for a family calls for growing up fast. Making sure teens stay in school is a primary goal for Black - and for Tim Roberts, who runs the Brick Program, an after-school fellowship program for young men.

Tim Roberts (to group): I need a show of hands of my young men who don't have a father in the house. Raise your hand, this is a family here. We have to understand that.

Cleveland’s official graduation rate is only 38% – one of the lowest in the nation. That’s not surprising when you consider the overall well-being of kids here. Research for a recent Plain Dealer news series called Children Left Behind found that among ten similar sized Midwest and Northeast cities, Cleveland ranked near the bottom in a number of categories - children who are disabled, who suffer from lead poisoning, and who live in poverty. And poverty, says 32-year Cleveland teaching veteran Merle Johnson, has a big impact on kids’ ability to succeed in school.

Tim Roberts: You know, there's so many health problems. Whether it's needing glasses or dental care, or whether it's just needing... lack of nutrition. .. In some homes in poverty there may be violence or drugs. Children are so overwhelmed just by trying to survive that many times it totally disconnects them from any type of, really, success in school.

But even though poverty is a factor in kids dropping out, some Cleveland activists say it’s not the primary culprit. Greg Brown is with the Federation for Community Planning.

Greg Brown: Kids who come from poverty circumstances have been able to go to school and graduate and go on and do well in their lives. And what has been consistent with that is that the parents and the community have had a value and an attitude that support education and academic achievement.

Catlin Scott writes for the journal Catalyst for Cleveland Schools, which just devoted an entire issue to this problem and found several things people said would help increase graduation rates.

Catlin Scott: One is to raise students expectations - to give Cleveland students more of a broader sense of what hey could do after graduation and how this would really help. Second is to connect kids with caring adults who would mentor them.

And that’s where people like Tim Roberts come in.

Tim Roberts: I'm a former police officer, and I realized was locking up a lot of young people. And from that I found out that a lot of these young people didn't have father figures or role models in the community. So I took this opportunity to fill in those gaps until someone else came along to fill in the gap for these young people.

One such young man is James Townsend, who says his father, after a stint in jail, never came back into his life, but instead left town.

James Townsend: I've got my mom though. And I've got Mr. Roberts to help me stay strong. So I just come to school and do what I've got to do, make it to college, show something for myself, show something for my family.

Home Ec teacher Jaquiline Black says she tries to give that same kind of support to her female students.

Jaquiline Black: If I can give them anything, I want them to have what I had. I had a family that supported me, that said "you know Jaqui, you made a mistake but you can still achieve.” Most of my girls don't have that person who's in that corner cheering for them.

But Black and others are convinced the larger community can and should do more to fill the voids in kids’ lives. Teacher Merle Johnson.

Merle Johnson: Our churches need to provide more opportunities for our children - not only in basketball and sports, but also learning things they haven't had the opportunity to learn in school. I also think that our churches and recreation centers should provide alternative placements when our children are suspended from school, so that they just don't go home and watch TV all day.

Greg Brown of the Federation for Community planning agrees.

Greg Brown: And what we've got to do is make the connection between the student, the classroom, the community, the teacher, the parent. And we haven't done a good job of that.

Kids dropping out is a problem many U.S. cities are tackling. A few are cited as having made some inroads in shoring up the social fabric of neighborhoods. Some here say they’re looking to those success stories for ideas on how to create a better atmosphere for kids here to succeed.

In Cleveland, Bill Rice, 90.3.