• Statewide
• Buffalo
• New York City
• Rochester

Inequities in Graduation Rates

Black and White, non-Hispanic male students in Rochester graduated at lower rates in 2005/6 than the national average. [1] More than two-thirds of the Black male students and nearly the same proportion of the White male students were unable to graduate with their cohort. The racial achievement gap is less than the national average due to the extraordinarily low graduation rate of White male students. The graduation rate for Black male students is much less than half the Benchmark.

The Benchmark for graduation rates of Black male students for school districts enrolling more than 10,000 Black male students is 82% (Fort Bend, Texas).

Discipline, Special Education, and Advanced Placement Inequities

The number of out-of-school suspensions given to Black male students in the Rochester public schools was equivalent to fifty-seven percent of Rochester's Black, non-Hispanic male student population and the percentage of out-of-school suspensions given to White male students in Rochester was equivalent to twenty-two percent, in the 2004/5 school year, as reported to the Office of Civil Rights of the U. S. Department of Education. Thirty-five Black male students were expelled.

Black, non-Hispanic male students were classified as Gifted/Talented less than half as often as White non-Hispanic male students in the Rochester public schools and were nearly twice as often placed in Mental Retardation classifications. If Black male students had been admitted to Gifted/Talent programs at the same rate as White male students, at least an additional 100 would have had that opportunity.

Proportionate to enrollment, more than five times as many White male students as Black male students in the Rochester public schools in 2004/5 were allowed to participate in Mathematics Advanced Placement courses and five times as many in Science Advanced Placement courses.

Footnotes:

1. Rochester enrollment and diploma data have been reported to the National Center for Education Statistics irregularly and is not considered as reliable as data from other districts. The data presented here are best estimates, given the available data.