About CHILD FIRST USA
CHILD FIRST USA is organized to support the national effort to improve high school and college persistence and graduation rates. it is well documented that these rates have slowed dramatically for males, particularly African Americans and Latinos. The national effort to reverse these trends continues to be inhibitied by:
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Drop out rates for Latinos are 27.5% (1.86 mil) & for Blacks are 21% (1.16 mil)
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States like Georgia and Florida that have extremely high and apparently irreversible dropout rates (e.g., a black male who enters the ninth grade in Georgia has slightly more than a 1 in 3 chance of earning his high school diploma.
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A national economy that appears to be stuck in a recession that reduces opportunities for employment and increases the likelihood that school dropouts, particularly Black and Latino males, become apprentices for prison.
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School systems that must try to operate successfully under increasing pressure to demonstrate effectiveness by meeting standards for teaching and learning, improving attendance, and producing graduates, while failing to meet the needs of many children due to the lack of innovation, inadequate funding and significant and regular budget cuts.
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Studies, articles, and presentations that inundate the media, the web, and social networks that describe the problems for children and education but fall short in delivering the collaborative change-oriented and tested solutions that work to the places where the children and the problems described are more likely to be found.
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Urban street corners filled with men, including many school-aged young men who are the products of failed schools, where economic conditions and disproportionate incarceration foster widespread unemployment, and a prison industrial system that must fill empty beds.