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Regarding “Report: Fixing Education Disparities Is a Public Safety Strategy” from the Justice Policy Institute, DCentric writes:

Researchers found the same stark disparities we’ve examined when it comes to education levels in DC’s wards; for instance, one-fifth of Ward 8 adults haven’t completed high school. But the report also breaks down formal education levels of DC’s adults by race. Nearly all white adults in DC — 99 percent of them — have a high school diploma or higher. For African Americans, 80 percent of adults have completed high school, while 57 percent of Hispanic adults have high school diplomas. [...]

Why do students drop out? WAMU 88.5′s Kavitha Cardoza has been examining DC’s dropout crisis, reporting that “students don?t drop out of school for any one reason. It’s usually a complicated mix, including individual traits, home life as well as school and neighborhood characteristics.”

In fact, “failing in school” is the only “academic” drop-out reason cited by the article. Other students drop out because they lose interest, either in school or in the lack of freedom that it entails, or because they have missed so many days that regular attendance seems out of reach. So how best can those difficulties be addressed — particularly when they rarely have a single source?

The Justice Policy Institute, whose study finds that those who have not completed high school are more likely to have prison records in the District, concludes that an increase in education spending can lead to a decline in crime and suggests “spending more money on parks, mentoring and schools and less money on courts and policing.”

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