ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 6, 1996 TAG: 9609060033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
SOURCE: San Francisco Examiner
After registering dramatic gains in the last decade, blacks have caught up to whites in high school graduation rates, a new U.S. Census Bureau study shows.
In 1985, 80.6 percent of blacks finished high school, compared with about 87 percent of whites, the Census Bureau said. Ten years later, the percentage of blacks receiving high school degrees jumped to 86.5 percent, while the rate for whites was 87.4 percent.
The findings were based on data collected in 1995 from adults ages 25-29.
Jennifer Day, co-author of the study, said the data provided a ``snapshot'' of the current education picture in the United States, as well as a glimpse into the future.
``When people who are now in their 70s and 80s were going through school, the world was very different,'' she said. ``Many didn't complete high school. Many dropped out in grammar school. If they graduated from eighth grade, they were doing pretty well. So older people tend to be less educated.''
Day said young people today have higher education levels. ``The general trend is a more educated society,'' she said.
In the study, Latinos registered the lowest high school completion rate, 57 percent, in the 25-29 age group.
``A contributing factor may be the large proportion of foreign-born Hispanics with less than a high school education,'' the report said.
Gail Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Unified School District, said the findings about black completion rates suggest that many high school students considered dropouts by their school districts eventually earn degrees.
Kaufman said the district can't track what happens to students who leave before graduating, except through census data.
``Our guess has always been that a large percentage of kids who drop out eventually do pick up a degree through a GED [General Educational Development test] or night school,'' she said. ``Sometimes it's just not possible for someone to finish high school in four years. That doesn't mean it's the end of a kid's life. This census data obviously shows that kids do go back to school as young adults.''
Kaufman said a district study showed that 84 percent of black students who started in the class of 1996 had graduated from the city's high schools, up from 76 percent in the class of 1989.
Among white students, 93 percent graduated in the class of 1996, compared with 82 percent in the class of 1989, she said.
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