A Plan for Success: Communities of Color Define Policy Priorities for High School Reform
Too often communities experience the tragic consequences of an unequal public education system that fails to provide high-quality education to students of color and youth from low-income neighborhoods. Nowhere is this crisis more acute than in America’s high schools, where many high-poverty schools lack the funding and resources of wealthier schools and districts.
Students of color and low-income students are also ill-served by low academic expectations. These challenges serve as barriers for districts and schools that struggle to improve their students’ achievement.
Every year, about 1.2 million students drop out of our nation’s high schools. A disproportionate number of these dropouts are students of color. Dropouts are more likely than high school graduates to experience poverty, poor health, and incarceration. And the high cost of dropping out is borne not only by the individual but by all Americans, who pay an economic and social price when students leave high school without a diploma.
The Campaign for High School Equity (CHSE) has created A Plan for Success, which outlines CHSE’s collective sense of the policy priorities that must be addressed if our nation’s high schools are to change so that all young people graduate from high school ready to work, ready for college, and ready to be knowledgeable citizens.