The City Where Blacks Outperform Whites in High School Graduation Rates

It may come as no surprise to readers that there is a huge racial gap in graduation rates at high schools in Dayton, Ohio. But what may be a big surprise is that the black graduation rate is 25 percentage points higher than the rate for whites.

The Dayton school district says that 76.3 percent of all black students who enroll in its high schools go on to earn a diploma. For whites, only 51.1 percent of the students graduate.

Only 21 percent of the students in the Dayton schools are white and a large percentage of the white students attend Belmont High School, which has a white majority. This school was rated by the state as in an “academic emergency.” The graduation rate for the small number of white students at the predominantly black high schools is even lower than the rate at Belmont High School.

Copyright © 2006. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.