State's high school rates are near the top overall, but last for black students Among the best overall. Dead last among African-Americans.
That's the gap - stunning to some, a grim old refrain to others - between Wisconsin's rankings in a new report on the states' high school graduation rates.

Saying the public should wake up and start caring, Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Spence Korte called the findings a "community travesty" but unsurprising.

Yet if the bare facts were obvious to local education leaders, the explanation is not. Most said the causes were so myriad as to defy description.

The report, released Tuesday by the Black Alliance for Educational Options, was another salvo in the debate over school vouchers that has been heating up as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear a major case on the issue.

The alliance's president cited dismal graduation rates in Milwaukee and Cleveland, which have the nation's largest voucher programs, as one more reason why he supports choice. But the head of the Milwaukee teachers union said vouchers could make matters worse.

The report shows substantial differences in graduation rates nationwide. About 78% of white children in public schools get diplomas, the report says, compared with 56% of black students.

Nowhere is the chasm wider than in Wisconsin.

Overall, 87% of the Badger State's children graduate, second only to Iowa. Of white children here, 92% graduate. But just 40% of black students receive high school diplomas; the next-lowest rates are in Minnesota, Georgia and Tennessee, according to the report.

In Milwaukee, the graduation rates were even lower: 34% for blacks, 42% for Hispanics and 74% for whites. Milwaukee's overall 43% graduation rate was third-worst among the nation's 50 biggest school districts, after Cleveland and Memphis.

"When you have a system like yours in Milwaukee that's graduating 34 percent of students, why should that organization have a monopoly on educating these young people?" said Kaleem Caire, president and chief executive officer of the alliance.

Jay Greene, the researcher who produced the report, said it was not designed to advance any particular agenda. It was based on data available from the federal government, he said. But much of Greene's past research has focused on what he says are the benefits of school vouchers.

"Make no bones about it, they're talking about comparing voucher to public schools here," said Bob Lehmann, president of the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association, which opposes vouchers.

Lehmann said he still was reviewing the study, but he did not question the basic finding that minority students are far behind whites.

"Everybody agrees there's a problem," he said. "The real difference is how to solve the problem."

He said vouchers hurt public schools by taking away money and the most committed parents.

Greene compared the number of people who graduated from high school in 1998 with the number enrolled in eighth grade four years earlier.

John Kraus, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Instruction, said Wisconsin should put more money into programs that give kids a boost early on. He cited 4-year-old kindergartens, smaller classes in elementary schools, and precollege courses for middle and high schoolers.

"We're not making the investment in students early on, so they lose hope that there's anything after high school, so why graduate?" he said.

Howard Fuller, the alliance's chairman and a former superintendent of MPS, said spending more on existing efforts wouldn't suffice.

"We've got to call for radical changes in the existing system, and that includes things like choice and charters," he said.

Korte said MPS, which has the bulk of the state's black students, needs to renew its focus on making sure all children learn what they should. He said preliminary efforts already had increased the number of ninth-graders who are promoted to 10th grade. But he also said people outside the education world must play a role.

"This really is a community travesty that if we're going to stop we have to change the culture so that it says to young adults, 'It's absolutely unacceptable for you to be out of school,' " Korte said.

He singled out families for a call to action. Milwaukee needs parents, he said, who don't "show up at school for the first time when their children are thinking about dropping out."

Korte said MPS is building a safety net for students by working more closely with community agencies and religious groups, especially through its neighborhood schools plan. Everyone who comes in contact with kids should send the message that staying in school is worthwhile, he said.

"We've got to make a way for kids to see themselves moving toward an achievable goal," Korte said. "And all the adults in the community are going to have to become cheerleaders."

At the Private Industry Council of Milwaukee County, officials are already working with schools to try to boost the graduation rate. This fall, the council launched the Reach Institute, which lets dropouts go back to high school while holding down part-time jobs.

But council CEO Gerard Randall, who also is vice president of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents, said it's not enough. He said urban school districts need more money, teachers need better training and parents need more social supports.

"It's such a complex, complicated situation, and yet there are some things that just cry out for attention on our part," Randall said. "Otherwise, we will have not just a generation of young people lost but several generations of young people lost."

Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Nov. 14, 2001.