Detroit Grad Rate 32%

It's bad when the graduation rate for a city's high schools is less than the Bush approval rate:

Just 31.9 percent of Detroit students graduate in four years, according to the first major study in Michigan conducted using a method now mandated by the federal government.

The study, by the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University, looked at how many ninth-graders in Detroit and the state as a whole left high school with diplomas after four years. It portends what may happen in August, when Michigan releases the graduation rate for the class of 2007, which will be calculated for the first time using the same formula used by MSU researchers.

Detroit Public Schools officials would not comment on the study, which has not yet been published, but School Board President Carla Scott said she doesn't believe the results, which echo the findings of an Education Week study released in June. That study found fewer than a quarter of ninth-graders who entered Detroit Public Schools in 1999 graduated four years later.

Of course they wouldn't comment, it would have required them to log off the NEA website and actually do their job. The School Board President says she doesn't believe the results? Perhaps she thinks the number should be lower.

Anyway, Detroit has been a liberal bastion for decades and is a great study in how these policies lead to brutal poverty and high crime. To get an idea of just how insane the policies are, the County Prosecutor doesn't blame the low grad rate for crime but blames videogames.

Let's examine the facts, shall we? The eleventh largest city in America has a drop-out rate of 68%, the city has always been run by Democrats and the Mayor is busted getting busy with an aide among myriad other scandals. Hmm, I wonder why they always win that coveted Most Dangerous City in America award.

This is my favorite part though:

"It doesn't seem credible to me," Scott said. "You can make data for anything you want it to say, but (they) should have factored in the reasons why they left.

"If you look at children moving out of the city, of course you're going to see a decrease. There are all kinds of reasons why children leave the city, that doesn't mean they're dropouts."

So is Ms. Scott saying that upwards of 60% of the drop-outs were students who moved out of the city? That would be laughable if it wasn't so damn pathetic.

Just as Democratic-lead Philly, Camden, NJ, Newark and Los Angeles are seeing obscene spikes in murder and other crimes, Detroit continues to sentence itself to misery by continually electing Dems.

On the bright side, at least Detroit's graduating a higher rate than the congressional approval rate.