🚀 go-pugleaf

   ( no excuse for this, for all the wealth Texas has to its name.. )
  ( take a bow Ron Paige, Rick Perry, and the 'Edjumucation' president ) 


   June 30, 2004, 4:57AM

   Texas graduation rate worst in nation, again

   By JASON SPENCER
   2004 Houston Chronicle

   For the second straight year, Texas has the lowest percentage of high
   school graduates in the nation, according to a U.S. Census Bureau
   study released Tuesday. Texas high school graduates

   Seventy-seven percent of Texans age 25 and older had a high school
   degree in 2003, the same percentage as a decade earlier, when Texas
   ranked 39th in the country. So while other states have seen their
   graduation rates improve -- a record 85 percent of Americans have high
   school degrees -- Texas is treading water.

   The results could be harmful to the state's economy as less educated
   people enter the work force, the state demographer said.

   "The downside is Texas could be less competitive," said Steve Murdock
   at the Texas State Data Center at the University of Texas-San Antonio.
   "It could be poorer because we know educational attainment is the best
   predictor of income."

   In 2002, the average high school dropout earned less than $19,000,
   compared with more than $27,000 for the typical graduate, according to
   the study.

   Texas' graduation rate is worst among Hispanics, the state's
   fastest-growing population. Barely half of Texas' 4.3 million
   Hispanics age 25 and older have a high school degree, according to the
   report.

   Omar Garza, a 27-year-old shoveling asphalt Tuesday with a road repair
   crew on Texas Avenue, said he regrets dropping out of Rosenberg's
   Lamar High School. He earns $8 an hour.

   "I needed one more semester to graduate," said Garza, who left Mexico
   for Texas as a teen. "I would like to finish. I don't want to do this
   all my life."

   Garza said he quit school partly because he didn't want to take
   classes in English as a second language. National high school
   graduates

   "I also met a girl, and you know how it is," he said. "We fell in love
   and started having kids."

   In the Houston Independent School District, where 57 percent of the
   211,000 students are Hispanic, administrators believe that as many as
   40 percent of the city's students never graduate. In May, HISD called
   together 350 residents with various backgrounds to offer solutions to
   the problem. A task force is reviewing those suggestions.

   Immigrant students present a particularly difficult challenge for
   Texas schools, said Debbie Graves Ratcliffe, spokeswoman for the Texas
   Education Agency. Even so, Texas' graduation rate has increased every
   year for the past decade, she said.

   Other states with large immigrant populations also found themselves
   near the bottom of the list. California ranked 42nd, New York came in
   at 36th and Florida was 35th.

   The numbers are skewed, Ratcliffe said, by those who come to the state
   as adults with no education.

   "We have large immigration from Mexico and Central America and that's
   influencing those numbers," she said.

   That influx, however, doesn't entirely account for the gap between
   Texas' Hispanics and Anglos, 91 percent of whom graduated high school,
   said Marma "Cuca" Robledo Montecel, director of the Intercultural
   Development Research Association in San Antonio. The nonprofit
   research organization founded in 1973 monitors Texas' dropout
   prevention efforts.

   "Nationally 85 percent of young people under 18 who are Hispanic are
   born in the U.S.," Montecel said. "The issue of dropouts is an issue
   of how well schools in the state are able to educate Latino students
   rather than a question of immigration. It is in our schools. That's
   where we need to focus."

   Socorro Herrera, who teaches at one of two Community Family Centers
   that help primarily Hispanics, said many of her students are Spanish
   speakers.

   Herrera said she sees three reasons why students enter GED programs at
   the southeast Houston center on Avenue E.

   "First, there is the language barrier and they want to learn English.
   Then there are students who just cannot pass the graduation tests.
   Third, they have personal problems like pregnancies or other matters,"
   Herrera said.

   Loucious Windom, 21, said he got his GED through the Houston Community
   College a year ago after realizing he wants to become a teacher. He
   had dropped out of Benji's Academy Charter School in Houston.

   "I had it in my mind that I'd never have a chance to catch back up. I
   was the oldest kid in my school," Windom said. He now works in the
   children's museum cafe, earning $6.75 an hour. "I just got tired of
   sitting at home. I wanted to be a teacher and I knew I had to have
   some kind of diploma and I made my mind up to get it."

   Chronicle reporter Jo Ann Zuqiga contributed to this story.
   http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/2654323
     _________________________________________________________________

George W. Bush consistently failed in everything at which his father
excelled. He got poor grades at the same schools where his father did
well, and was a disaster in the same industry (oil) where his father made
his fortune. His father was a varsity athlete; George W. had to settle for
the cheerleading squad. His father was a fighter pilot in World War II;
George W. was a desultory member of the Texas Air National Guard. 
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