Monthly Archives: October 2012

by James A. Bacon

In a blog post yesterday, I observed that, while blacks are more prone to drop out from high school than whites statewide, in some 30 rural Virginia localities, blacks showed a lower dropout rate. In Nottoway County, the drop-out gap between blacks and whites was 14 percentage points for the class of 2012 — in favor of blacks. In next-door Lunenburg, the gap was almost 20 points. I speculated that perhaps the breakdown of white, working class culture highlighted by Charles Murray in “Coming Apart” might have played a role.

An interesting conversation ensued in the comments section. Don Rippert hypothesized that perhaps the difference could be attributed to different levels of religiosity between blacks and whites. If blacks attended church more frequently, perhaps they were more likely to hew to traditional values and, consequently, suffer lower rates of social dysfunction such as divorce, teen pregnancy and other problems that would induce students to drop out of school.

Among the data points he presented in support of his conjecture is the fact that there are 59 churches serving the 5,000 households in Lunenberg County, an average of 84 households per church. That compares to, say, suburban Henrico County, where 140 churches serve 108,000 households, an average of 772 households per church. Furthermore, he cited Carsey Institute data showing the religiosity of America’s “black belt,” where blacks and whites are roughly equal in numbers, are significantly higher than for Appalachia, which is overwhelmingly white.

Rippert’s data is suggestive but it’s too impressionistic to persuade anyone who doesn’t want to be convinced that Nottoway/Lunenburg blacks are more religious than their white neighbors. What we can do, however, is test the idea that dropout rates are correlated with metrics of socially dysfunctional behaviors — out-of-wedlock births and teen pregnancies — that might be influenced by religious views.

Statewide, 28% of all white births in 2009 were non-marital while 67% of all black births were. Here is the breakdown by locality. And here are the numbers for Nottoway and Lunenburg:

The rates were elevated for both races, but the rate for blacks was two to three times higher than for whites. If out-of-wedlock births has any bearing out dropout rates in Lunenburg and Nottoway, I can’t see it.

How about teenage births then? It’s teen births that disrupt a girl’s prospects for completing high school, not a non-marital birth later in life. Statewide, the rate of live births is 11.8 per 1,000 females among whites and 22.4% among blacks. Here are the numbers for Nottoway and Lunenburg:

Nope, that’s not the answer either. Blacks have a higher rate of teen pregnancy.

Whatever accounts for dropouts in Lunenburg and Nottoway, it’s not affecting girls as much as boys. In Lunenburg, 15.8% of girls dropped out compared to 25.4% of boys. The gap is 3.1 percentage points in Nottoway. Perhaps we need to be comparing juvenile male arrest rates, but I can’t find that data.

On the other hand, maybe there are non-sociological factors at work. Maybe there are  dynamic principals and school administrators who inspire black high school students to achieve. Maybe the two counties have dropout prevention programs aimed at black students that I’m not aware of.

Or maybe I’m just chasing a will ‘o the wisp. Perhaps, because the graduating classes of both school systems are small, we’re dealing with small numbers, which make for high rates of variability from year to year. Perhaps the drop-out rates for the classes of 2012 are a fluke and I need to find better things to do with my time.

by James A. Bacon

Over the weekend, I heard a story that a teacher from Wilkes County, N.C. in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, told about discipline problems he had encountered at school. My friend kept us spellbound as he described how a trouble maker, whose mother had taught him “not to take nothin’ off nobody,” engaged in a series of physical confrontations with students and teachers. Our initial reaction was, wow, what a jerk. But as my friend delved deeper into the tale, we gained a little sympathy. The kid’s parents were separated and his mother turned tricks in the back seat of the car. One day, not long after the incidents at school, the father returned to the house. He shot the boy in the stomach, shot the mother in the head, killing her, and then put the gun under his chin, and killed himself.

The story brought to mind Charles Murray’s book, “Coming Apart,” about the social and moral disintegration of the white working class in America. There has always been a violent streak to Southern white working-class culture, of course, so a single tragic anecdote means little in itself. But having blogged recently about Virginia’s dropout rate (which is actually improving) and the fact that Virginia’s immigrant population has achieved greater success (whether measured by education, unemployment or income) than native Virginians, I wondered if Murray’s thesis accurately described what is happening here.

I found myself perusing Virginia Department of Education statistics on public high school graduation rates for the class of 2012. The broad patterns are familiar to everyone. Women graduate on time at a higher rate than men: 90.6% compared to 85.5%. Whites graduate at a higher rate (90.8%) than blacks (82.7%) and Hispanics (80.9%) but at a lower rate than Asians (94.7%).

What was interesting and counter-intuitive, however, was what emerged from taking a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction look at graduation rates. While the statewide pattern of women graduating at higher rates than men held true for the vast majority of localities, the pattern of of whites graduating at a higher rate than blacks was far less likely to do so.

Statewide, there is a 5.1 percentage point differential between the graduation rates of women and men. Women graduated at higher rates in every Virginia city and county save 15, and in nearly every one of those the difference was minimal. By contrast, there was an 8.1 percentage point differential in the graduation rate between whites and blacks statewide — yet blacks showed a higher graduation rate than whites in 31 jurisdictions.

In some jurisdictions with higher black graduation rates, the differences were miniscule. In others, blacks represented a tiny minority in a predominantly white student body, comprising only 11 individuals, for instance, in Grayson County, where all 11 (100%) graduated compared to only 84.6% of their white classmates. Perhaps those can be dismissed as meaningless statistical anomalies.

But what do we make of Caroline County with black and white student bodies of roughly equal size, where the black-white graduation gap was 9.0 percentage points — in favor of blacks? Or Cumberland County where the graduation gap was 10.3 percentage points in favor of blacks? Or Nottoway County where the gap was 14 percentage points? Or Lunenburg County where the gap was 19.6 percentage points? All statistical flukes? I doubt it.

Across Virginia’s suburban and inner-city jurisdictions the pattern of higher white graduation rates prevail almost uniformly. The exceptions to the rule occur primarily in Virginia’s rural counties where, the stereotype holds, racial prejudice and discrimination are the strongest. These numbers would seem to demolish that widely held view. As a fallback position, one might argue that rural counties are equal in their poverty. How, then, does one explain a Nottoway or Lunenburg County? How does one explain such superior outcomes for blacks?

To answer that question brings us full circle. I would love to think that it means rural blacks are prospering. Given the general state of the economy, however, I find that difficult to believe. Alternatively, one must ask, do these numbers reflect a breakdown of white, working class families and value structure? It would be dangerous to draw hard-and-fast conclusions from one year’s worth of graduation data. Any serious inquiry would require examining standardized test scores, unemployment rates, incomes, teenage pregnancy rates, rates of substance abuse and rates of incarceration and tracking trends over time. But such an effort might yield fascinating conclusions.