Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Promise

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Promise

Oral Lee Brown was born in Mississippi in the early 1940s.  She is the ninth of twelve children born to 'old-fashioned farming folk' who grew cotton and corn.  Today she lives in Oakland, California.

Although California reports an official graduation rate of 87% to the Federal Government using a Federal formula, on the Dept of State website they say the rate is closer to 71% (based on the % of freshmen who enter high school and go on to earn a diploma four years later).  That number is troubling enough, but things look even worse when broken down by ethnic group - according to The Civil Rights Project at Harvard the Californian graduation rate for African-Americans is 57% (50% for boys) and 60% for Latinos (54% for boys).  The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (which tracks public school graduation rates across the nation) reports a similar picture across the USA, based on its 2000 data: 69% overall, 53% Hispanic, 55% African-American, 76% White, 79% Asian.

According to the US News & World Report, the USA ranks 16th among 20 developed nations when comparing school graduation rates.

Link: The Oral Lee Brown Foundation.

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This article relates to The Promise. It first ran in the April 6, 2005 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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