State of the Re:Union
Back to the Basics - An American Graduate Special 

In this American Graduate special, State of the Re:Union takes a closer look at school, community, and the drop out crisis in this country.  With reporting from both urban and rural schools, and interviews with education experts, SOTRU goes “ back to the basics”, looking at strategies that get to the heart of what makes students want to learn. 

Billboard (:59)
Incue: You're listening to State of the Re:Union
Outcue: But first, this news.

News Hole: 1:00-6:00

SEGMENT A (12:29)
Incue: I'm Al Letson
Outcue: That's ahead on State of the Re:Union

A-1.  Episode Intro
Host Al Letson reflects on his own challenges at school and the teacher who kept him from “falling through the cracks.”

A-2.  Roxy’s Story
Can dropping out ever be the right choice?  Writer and musician Roxy Haji performs her story of cycling through 16 schools before she turned 16 before deciding to drop out and pursue an education on her own terms.  

SEGMENT B (18:59)
Incue: I'm Al Letson
Outcue: P-R-X-DOT-O-R-G

B-1.  Interview with Russell Rumberger
Host Al Letson interviews Professor Russell Rumberger, who has researched the drop-out rate in America, and the consequences for kids who quit school, for over 30 years.  Rumberger explains the reasons students leave school, the ways the decision affects their lives, and describes  a surprisingly simple solution for inspiring high-risk students stay in school.

B-2.  Rosemary at the Farm… in Brooklyn
We visit a middle school in Brooklyn in a district where only about half of students graduate and discover an innovation that’s drawing one 8^th grader to her school like a magnet.  Reported by State of the Re:Union contributor Marietta Synodis.     

B-3.  Dear Mrs. Fleming
In a spin on State of the Re:Union’s “Dear City” letters series, we hear a Dear Teacher letter from Queens, NY resident Toni Perreira.  Toni introduces us to Mrs. Fleming, founder of an extraordinary school where the students learn not just from books but from the world around them.  

SEGMENT C (18:59)
Incue: I'm Al Letson…
Outcue: This is N-P-R.

C-1. Bittersweet Ozarks
When Ellen Gray Massey was recruited to teach at a rural one-room-school in the Missouri Ozarks, she found that the students taught her how to teach them.  One magical year exploring the rivers, streams and traditions of the Ozarks later inspired Miss Massey to found a groundbreaking student-run magazine called Bittersweet.  Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, Bittersweet students roamed the Ozarks documenting the local culture and crafts, and discovering their own history in the process.  

C-2. Everton School 
Albert Bryant has to remind his students to call him “Mr. Bryant”, because most of them know him simply as Albert.  Just 23 years old, Albert teaches math at the same tiny K-12 school he attended in his hometown of Everton.  Mr. Bryant has founded a new student club that he hopes will bring an economic kick-start to a town with few employment opportunities—and change the way that students think about their hometown in the process.  

C-3.  Interview with Dr. Jerry Johnson
Host Al Letson interviews rural schools expert Dr. Jerry Johnson on the unique connections between schools and their communities in small towns across America.

C-4.  Wrap-up / Montage
Al closes the episode with a reflection on education and a montage of voices from teachers and students.

PROGRAM OUT @ 59:00

Broadcast Window Begins 04/26/2013

The Spring 2013 Season of State of the Re:Union (SOTRU) will be available beginning April 26, 2013, on PRX and the Content Depot without charge to all public radio stations, and may be aired an unlimited number of times prior to December 31, 2013. The program may be streamed live on station websites but not archived. Excerpting is permitted for promotional purposes only. 

State of the Re:Union is produced by Al Letson, presented by PRX, and co-distributed by NPR and PRX.  Major funding for the State of the Re:Union comes from CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

Thanks for your consideration of State of the Re:Union with Al Letson. Please contact your NPR Stations relations person or Deborah Blakeley at Blakeley & Company, LLC, at blakeley.deb@gmail.com with questions or to confirm carriage.

State of the Re:Union
Dropouts to Graduates: The Story of the Care Center - An American Graduate Special

Say you meet a teenager. She’s 16, and she’s already dropped out of school. Now, she’s pregnant, due in a few months. She’s on her own, as her boyfriend disappeared when news of the baby came out. She doesn’t have a job, and is hoping her mom won’t kick her out of the house. What would your expectations for her be? What do you think she’ll achieve? If you’re in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the answer to those questions might be very different from the predictable one of hopelessness and dim futures. That’s because Holyoke is home to the Care Center, an alternative school just for pregnant and parenting teens who’ve dropped out of high school. It’s not your typical GED program, either: it’s modeled on a prep school, so students are learning fencing, rowing, yoga and poetry along with basic math and reading. Their personal histories are fraught with homelessness, domestic violence, gangs, food insecurity—the entire student body is living at or below 50 % of the poverty level, and 2/3rds of them dropped out of high school by the 10th grade. Despite all that, between 70 and 85 percent of Care Center students go on to college. In this American Graduate special, State of the Re:Union goes deep inside this school—learning its philosophy and the life stories of students and teachers—to explore what it takes to turn a teen mom’s life around. 

Billboard (:59)
Incue: "I'm Al Letson and you're"
Outcue: "...first this news"

News Hole: 1:00-6:00

SEGMENT A (12:29)
Incue: "You're listening to"
Outcue: "ahead on State of the Re:Union."

A-1. Baby Stroller Parking Lot 
We open the episode at the entrance to the Care Center which is, quite literally, a baby stroller parking lot. All of the school’s 40 students are mothers, so the school’s on-site day care is a zoo of kids, daily. This scene affords us the opportunity to meet a couple of students (and their children) and introduce listeners to the school and the ideas we’ll be exploring in the episode. 

A-2. The Holyoke Story
All of the work being done at the Care Center must be framed by the enormous challenges being faced by its students, poverty top among them. And so, before we get too deep into the story of the school, itself, listeners need to know a bit of the story of the community it’s based in. Holyoke has the perfect storm of conditions for a high teen birth rate. It’s one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, with a high unemployment rate. It has a very dropout rate; in recent years, not even half the students who start the 9^th grade in Holyoke graduate. Mix that with a lack of sex ed in schools (until very recently) and you have a city with the highest teen birth rate in the state. 

A-3. Fencing, Yoga and the GED
With that frame of history and statistics in mind, we dive into the Care Center, the challenges it faces and the philosophy that governs it. Here’s what they have to do: engage students who don’t like school. Teach them enough to pass their GED—something that has eluded many of these women who’ve tried other programs. The Care Center approaches this with ideas that started out as a kind of experiment. 

They asked, what makes prep schools—the best education money can buy-- so successful? Equal exposure to the arts, humanities and athletics as well as basic academics, small class sizes, and an “assumption of and commitment to student success.” That means, for the first time in these students’ lives in some cases, their teachers expect them to go to college. They expect them to join the rowing team. They expect them to have intellectual hunger and capacity. And, often to the surprise of the students themselves, all of these become true. 

B-1. Kim’s Story
Kim Chambers has had more hardship packed into her 18 years than many do in a whole lifetime. She was abandoned by her birth mother as an infant, left with a stranger in Mexico whom she didn’t know for years was not her actual mom. At age 13, she struck out on her own, eager to pursue an education, and unable to do so in the rural part of Mexico she was raised. For much of her teenage years, she bounced from house to house, holing herself up in the library when she had nowhere else to go. At 17, she got pregnant by her much-older boyfriend, but he proved to have restrictive ideas of what she could be: wanting her to stay home and be a housewife, instead of pursuing a career. And so, with an infant in tow, she came to the United States by herself, to get her G.E.D. and go to college (She’s a U.S. citizen, having been born here before being taken to Mexico). Landing in Springfield with a family friend, she found the Care Center, and there, she has flourished. She’s discovered poetry, and a strong poetic voice. She’s discovering literature and art history through the Clemente college course. She’s set to take her G.E.D. tests in January, with the hope of, someday, becoming a lawyer. Kim says her daughter, Jamie, is her motivation to succeed, and The Care Center, she says, is “the start of the way. I was lost. And from the beginning point that is the Care Center, a lot of branches and a lot of ways open.”

B-2. Poetry and the Coincidence of History
Twelve years ago, a journalist named Tzivia Gover made a radical life change. After a visit to a class at the Care Center, she left her job as a daily news reporter to teach poetry to these teenage moms. Little did she know that in doing so, she was fulfilling a historical legacy of incredible coincidence. With her students, Tzivia learned that their school building was once home to Elizabeth Towne (1865-1960), an early suffragist and leader of the New Thought movement (precursor of today’s New Age movement). It turns out that Towne herself was a teen mother who left school at age fourteen to marry. Unhappy in her marriage, she divorced her first husband and set out on her own, supporting herself by publishing a magazine that went on to become the nation’s leading New Thought journal. The magazine was called The Nautilus, and it was published from the very building that now houses the Care Center. So, when Tzivia’s students were churning out their own poems, they decided to launch a poetry journal and dub it The Nautilus II, in honor of Towne. The journal is published annually, featuring the poems of the teen mom students at the Center. 

B-3. Teaching a Teen Mom Plato
Many of the student moms at the Care Center have trouble just putting food on the table for the kids, and paying the electric bill every month. So, one might argue, what’s the use of enrolling them in a college course that teaches philosophy, art history and literature? And, for kids who didn’t ever seem to enjoy school, how do you convince them they’ll like it? Such is the charge for the Clemente Course in the Humanities, an usual and innovative program that the Care Center offers, along with 15 other organizations across the country. The course was called by its founder “an avenue to reflection,” and is founded on the idea that low-income people need more than just the practical skills required to get a job—they need the tools to ponder the world the live in, in order to lift themselves out of poverty. At the Care Center, it’s taught by a handful of local college professors, who come two days a week to teach students about everything from Plato to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.”  And it works: Clemente Course graduates not only earn credits from Bard College, they say it’s given them a new perspective on their lives. As one student said, weeks into the philosophy portion of the course, "there's a word for the kinds of problems I think about all the time: metaphysics."

That’s the kind of expansion the Care Center is looking for.  “There’s a way in which the course asks people to examine their life and what they are seeing around them more deeply,” says Anne Teschner. “Living in poverty can be very constricting, so to bring those more expansive ideas into the world of people struggling economically is really empowering.”


SEGMENT C (18:59)
Incue: "You're listening to State of the Re:Union ..."
Outcue: "This is N-P-R" 

C-1. Making the Care Center Happen: 
In this segment, we dig into the nuts and bolts of making a program like the Care Center’s happen. How much does it cost? And could it be a model for other places? In addition to hearing from Anne Teschner, we speak with a local education consultant in Massachusetts, both about the promise of the Care Center, and the expense—the hurdles to it happening elsewhere.

C-2. Transforming What You Think It Means to be a Mom 
Students aren’t the only ones learning lessons at the Care Center: the staff is too. And the lessons they’re gleaning are as much about motherhood as education. In this segment, we hear the story of the school’s education director, Ana Rodriguez. A teen mom herself, she’s made helping other teen moms get an education her personal mission. However, she had to reflect on her role as both a mother and a teacher anew when her own daughter ended up getting pregnant as a teenager and attending the Care Center. From Ana’s story, we hear how poetry teacher Tzivia Gover had her own revelation about the teen mothers at the Care Center. From having thought that getting pregnant as a teenager was a kind of life catastrophe, Tzivia realized that for some of these girls, having a baby was their avenue to a better life, the motivation they needed to pursue an education.

C-3. Dear Care Center
Students at the Care Center write a letter to the school, describing how they feel about it, and their role this place has played in their lives. 

C-4. You Get Your G.E.D… Then What? 
There’s a lot of talk about college at the Care Center. For a lot of students, it still feels like a far off dream. But it turns out figuring out how to dream about what they want to do after college is a big part of making it a reality. The Care Center includes as a required course a class about the transition from college to work, and most of that is aimed at expanding student’s idea of what jobs they could do. Jude, the teacher of the class, says for many of these students, their world has been frighteningly small. If you ask a lot of students what they “want to be when they grow up,” they say the same things over and over: nurse and cop, because those are the only jobs they’ve seen that look stable. So, a big piece of what Jude’s class does is try to broaden that world, to actually engage students’ imaginations, encourage them to dream as big as they can. And Care Center grads do go on to execute those dreams. Roxanne Roman just got her associate’s degree in Criminal Justice and is waiting to hear back from the local police academy to live her dream of being a cop. 

C-5. Final Reflection and Montage 
Al reflects on his own experience as a teen father, and then we hear a montage of thoughts from the students and staff of the Care Center as to how it helps students craft a new, alternate vision of their future.

Broadcast Window Begins 04/26/2013

The Spring 2013 Season of State of the Re:Union (SOTRU) will be available beginning April 26, 2013, on PRX and the Content Depot without charge to all public radio stations, and may be aired an unlimited number of times prior to December 31, 2013. The program may be streamed live on station websites but not archived. Excerpting is permitted for promotional purposes only. 

State of the Re:Union is produced by Al Letson, presented by PRX, and co-distributed by NPR and PRX.  Major funding for the State of the Re:Union comes from CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 

Thanks for your consideration of State of the Re:Union with Al Letson. Please contact your NPR Stations relations person or Deborah Blakeley at Blakeley & Company, LLC, at blakeley.deb@gmail.com with questions or to confirm carriage. 

Potty Mouth
As a teacher, Glynn takes an unorthodox approach to discipline a little too far . . .

Producer: Renzo Gorrio and Mark Ristich


The Life of Brian
Not everyone’s born with a gift. But that’s where teachers step in. Poet and storyteller David Perez takes us into the classroom for a day in the life of Brian.  David Perez continues to teach and is the author of the poetry collection, “Love in a Time of Robot Apocalypse” available from Write Bloody Publishing. Find more at www.thedavidperez.com.

Producer: Jamie DeWolf and Renzo Gorrio


Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
Teacher Barbara Shipka encounters an unexpected challenge when she meets Ben because Ben isn’t just any old problem child.  Ben is a genius.

Producer: Julia DeWitt


Real School
A six year old girl is faced with a terrifying teacher and finds a secret weapon.  

Producer: Anna Sussman

Homeless Opera
Matt Peacock had two very different jobs--working as an opera critic and at the local homeless shelter. He never thought the two would ever have anything to do with one another, until a thoughtless quote in the newspaper changed everything.

Check out Streetwise Opera here, where you can check out past and upcoming performances and donate to their cause.

Producer: Stephanie Foo, Hannah Andrassy and Loftus Productions.


Father Dennis
Justin Sweeney’s mother was a gambler, and his childhood was difficult. When it became clear that he had to make it on his own, who would take care of him?

Thanks to Justin Sweeney for his story! Justin submitted his story on our website. Submit your own right here!

Producer: Stephanie Foo


Learning to read
When Joe Buford’s wife hands him a letter and asks him to read it, Joe confides in her one of his biggest secrets.

This story was produced by Story Corps.


Writing on the wall
A mother does everything it takes to help her child learn to read, but all she had to do was take her on the road.

Producer: Jamie DeWolf, Anna Sussman

Adults in the White House, Congress, think tanks, principals’ offices, teachers’ unions, and other Very Important Positions are fighting over how to educate kids. But what do teenagers think about the education we’re getting?

This hour, we take you back to school – public high school, to be precise.

Teenagers share our stories, in our words.

We dissect school standards that are too hard, or too easy. We get educated in an unequal public school system, and make decisions for what comes next after high school.

Stories in the program:

1. Amon "AJ" Frazier, 'Promotion In Doubt' WNYC's Radio Rookies http://www.prx.org/pieces/46796-promotion-in-doubt

Amon 'AJ' Frazier was trying to get through eighth grade when New York City's Department of Education made it harder to move up to the next grade. AJ wasn't sure he could pass, but as he found out, the new standards were more flexible than they seemed. AJ created this story for WNYC's "Radio Rookies" when he was 14 years old.

2. Libby Donovan, 'These Kids Didn't Want To Be There, And I Did' (Orig. 'I Was a Slacker in the Top Ten'), Blunt Youth Radio Project http://www.prx.org/pieces/46381-i-was-a-slacker-in-the-top-10

Many American high schools put students in 'tracks' based on academic achievement. But at South Portland High School in Maine, students of all abilities were mixed together in the classroom. Libby Donovan was not pleased. She made this story when she was 19, for the Blunt Youth Radio Project.

3. Amanda Wells, 'The Night I Met Jonathan Kozol,' KRCB Voice of Youth http://www.prx.org/pieces/18445-the-night-i-met-jonathan-kozol

Let's go on a field trip with Amanda Wells, age 17. She saw Jonathan Kozol speak at Sonoma State University in 2005. Kozol has documented and criticized "the restoration of apartheid schooling in America." Amanda asks how she — a white girl — could help end racial separation. She made this story for KRCB Voice of Youth.

4. Erika Ortiz, Paul Roldan, and Alca Usan, 'Where Were You Fifth Period?,' Curie Youth Radio http://www.prx.org/pieces/10160-where-were-you-fifth-period

Time for a quiz. Why do students cut class? Is it because: A.Their pants are wet. B. They're tired. C. They got engaged on lunch break.

Erika Ortiz, Paul Roldan, and Alca Usan get answers from students at Curie High School on the Southwest Side of Chicago. They made this story for Curie Youth Radio.

5. Sam Pearson, 'Sam Drops Out,' Youth Media Project http://www.prx.org/pieces/46483-sam-drops-out

Sam Pearson was a student at Monte Del Sol Charter School in Santa Fe, NM. He didn't want to be in high school anymore. So he dropped out. Sam made this story in 2010 when he was 17 years old, for the Youth Media Project in Santa Fe.

6. Caitlin Garing, 'Life After High School,' Alaska Teen Media Institute http://www.prx.org/pieces/4662-think-piece-on-life-after-high-school

More than a third of public high school graduates don't go to college. One anxious mother doesn't know what her son plans to do. So she hires a hard–boiled private detective to find out. Caitlin Garing was a senior in high school when she created this noir–inspired radio play for the Alaska Teen Media Institute.

7. Lena Eckert–Erdheim, 'Making It Out Of High School' Youth Noise Network http://www.prx.org/pieces/17755-making-it-out-of-high-school

Lena Eckert–Erdheim asked fellow seniors at Durham School of the Arts what they planned to do after high school. Go to college or become a hobo? Hmm, tough choice. Lena made this story for Youth Noise Network (YNN) at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. YNN is now part of SpiritHouse. (Lena went to college.)

8. Tirhas Kibrzghi, 'Students Vs. SATs' WAMU's Youth Voices http://www.prx.org/pieces/26721-students-vs-sats

Each year, the SAT test strikes fear into the hearts of about 1.5 million high school students. Colleges use SAT scores to make admissions decisions, but many high school students say the test carries too much weight. WAMU's Youth Voices reporter Tirhas Kibrzghi takes us inside a testing center near Washington, DC.

9. Claudia Villa, 'The Kids Who Got Out: My Graduation Day' KRCB Voice of Youth http://www.prx.org/pieces/11654-the-kids-who-got-out-my-graduation-day

The Monti - American Graduate Special is an hour of true stories from the front lines of North Carolina’s high school drop out crisis. It's hosted by Jeff Polish. He's the founder of The Monti, a local non-profit whose stated mission is to create community through the story-telling. For this collaboration with WUNC, Jeff sought out North Carolinians with personal stories to tell about the struggles that get in the way of a successful high school education.

Jeff Polish, founder, The Monti

It's made possible in part by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, GlaxoSmithKline, The Goodnight Educational Foundation, Joseph M Bryan Foundation and listeners who support North Carolina Public Radio WUNC.

The Story-Tellers

In addition to Brynn Surratt (pictured above) the story-tellers are:

Elisha Vaitsas from Durham

Casio Noell from Chapel Hill

Bill Kenyon, a teacher & coach from Chapel Hill

Sara Carucci, a graduation coach from Raleigh NC

 

There’s been a dramatic change in public education over the past 10 years and it’s all about numbers. Schools across the country are using standardized tests to measure just about everything about student performance. And these tests can have stark consequences. School closures, student diplomas, teacher pay raises – all are increasingly linked to test results. This documentary examines how high-stakes testing took root in American classrooms and what effect it is having. "Put to the Test" brings these questions to life through a portrait of Western Guilford High School in Greensboro, North Carolina over the course of two school years.

Former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook talks to Russell Rumberger about the high school drop out crisis in America. Rumberger is Vice Provost for Education Partnerships at the University of California Office of the President and Professor of Education at UC Santa Barbara. He also directs the California Dropout Research Project. He has written about dropouts for the past 30 years and is author of Dropping Out: Why Students Drop Out of School and What Can be Done About It.  

An edited version of this interview was featured in Left Behind, Dropping Out, a documentary produced as part of American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen, a public media initiative, supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), to help students stay on the path to graduation and future success. 

Former NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook talks to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about the high school dropout crisis in America. An edited version of this interview was featured in Left Behind, Dropping Out, a documentary produced as part of American Graduate: Let’s Make It Happen, a public media initiative, supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), to help students stay on the path to graduation and future success. 

"Daily Lessons: Inside Western Guilford High School" is a ten part documentary series about a public high school in Greensboro, North Carolina. A team of reporters spent six months at the school to document how a ?typical? high school is dealing with some daunting new realities. Similar challenges face schools across the country. Schools across the country are facing similar challenges: ? Expanded testing requirements: Complying with the federal ?No Child Left Behind Act? and the North Carolina ?ABCs of Public Education? means tests, tests, and more tests. The result is a radical shift in the traditional rhythms of high school and big changes in what students are learning and how teachers are teaching. ? A worsening teacher shortage: North Carolina needs 10,000 new teachers annually to fill classroom vacancies, yet the state?s teaching colleges are only turning out 3,000 a year. At the same time, many new teachers burn out quickly, and veteran teachers are increasingly frustrated with the direction of public education, and wondering whether they?ll stay. ? Demographic change: NC has one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in the nation, meaning schools have to figure out ways to teach thousands of students whose first languages can be Spanish, Tagolog, Urdu or Arabic. Supporting those students, helping them learnEnglish, and making sure they pass standardized tests, is a challenge for high schools. ? A radically changed economy: The manufacturing and agriculture jobs that once fueled the North Carolina economy are fast disappearing, replaced by jobs that require more skills and higher education. Some educators say high schools must prepare all students for college. Others say high schools can?t forget students who might not be headed for higher education. "Daily Lessons: Inside Western Guilford High School" was produced for the series "North Carolina Voices: Studying High School" on North Carolina Public Radio ? WUNC. The series originally aired in May 2006. For more about the series, please visit http://wunc.org/voices A script for each radio piece, including a suggested host introduction, is attached here. Feel free to edit intros.

Almost a decade ago, third graders at seven high-poverty schools in the Twin Cities got an offer: Stay in school, and we'll give you $10,000 for college. There was just one condition -- the students had to stay enrolled in either the Minneapolis or St. Paul school district.

The offer came from the Minneapolis Foundation, which wanted to fight the problem of transiency, and get more kids to graduate and go to college.

One year later, one-third of the kids were already gone. The remaining students had scattered to more than 50 different schools.

Tiara Bellaphant made it all the way. She explains what it was like to be part of the experiment.

In 2009, Governor Bev Perdue and the State Department of Public Instruction took over the Halifax School System in Northeastern North Carolina. At the time, only about one third of students in Halifax high schools passed end of grade tests, and only about one-half graduated.

Things have improved. Graduation rates have risen by 16 percent. But there’s still a long way to go. As part of WUNC's American Graduate series, Dave DeWitt visited Halifax Northwest High School to see how the turnaround is going.

North Carolina’s high school graduation rate is inching up. For the first time last year, the state ranked better than the national average. But still, about 1 in 4 high school students in the state drops out. And in a knowledge-based economy, those without at least a high school diploma are highly likely to struggle the rest of their lives.

As part of WUNC’s American Graduate Project, Dave DeWitt reports on one of the innovative schools focused on improving graduation rates.

Students all over Philadelphia are being pushed out of schools and right into the school to prison pipeline. This is happening because of the lack of resources inside schools and the use of harsh discipline practices that force students into the criminal justice system.

But students from several organizations are fighting to end the school to prison pipeline, as members of theCampaign for Nonviolent Schools. Many of these students shared their experiences at an event calledYouth Speak-Out Against Push Out. It was a part of theDignity in Schools National Week of Action on School Pushout.

This radio piece features students' voices from this powerful event. It was produced by Shayla Johnson and Andrea Jobe.

About 55 percent of black high school graduates go onto college, according to the most recent statistics from the Department of Education. That’s compared to about 64 percent of white students. Of those African-American students who do enroll, only about 40 percent will graduate within six years. College-bound WAMU Youth Voices reporter Andre knows he’s lucky to be scratching his head over a choice between schools. But the stakes are high, so he also knows he needs to choose wisely.