“New Jersey graduates a higher percentage of students from high school than any other state in the country - 84.5 percent.
…
But only 55.5 percent of ninth graders in Philadelphia’s public schools get through senior year and graduate.”

::gulp::
Good on Jersey for finding a way to keep their students in school for those four tedious years of drudgery high school, but that’s not the point of this article. The point, as I see it, is that Philadelphia has yet to find that stride; and we’re sucking for it.

Martha Woodall (Inquirer) wrote this thrilling little review of the Philadelphia system based on some numbers released in a new study by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, a DC based non-profit. According to the study, the national average of kids who make it from ninth grade all the way to graduation is 70%; hold up our 55.5% to that and sheepish excuses start coming out.

I’m left asking what the answer is. How do we keep more young people in school until they can graduate? And how do people like the bloggers here (young, unmarried-except-for-Kariyanine, educated, mostly white) help support the communities surrounding high schools in Philly?

I mean, the big answer is family support. Parents need to value education and pass that belief on to their children to really be effective as a support system, but how do we support that? Where are the answers?

For the rest of the article, check here.