Why is the Dropout rate so high?

According to the “Four Resources Model” article, “it remains our position that literacy was never a matter of deficit but principally an issue of economic and social access to the cultural institutions charged with literacy education and practice. It is no mere coincidence that the graduation rate for African-American high school students is 59 percent in Washington D.C. and 95 percent in Loudoun County, Virginia, which is only about an hour from the district. These dropouts often carry familial, financial, and social burdens that hinder their ability to obtain sufficient “access to the cultural institutions” that can help them lift some of these burdens. The distribution and maintenance of literacy on the surface is available to all; however, African-American and Hispanic students have a difficult time acquiring as much literacy as their White counterparts. Often, literacy education and practice in many inner-city public schools disproportionately represent the perspective of one dominant racial group. This is sometimes due to the fact that those who write and teach the texts these students read are completely out of touch with the demographic the texts are created for. For example, one can visit any “under-achieving” high school and find that many of the texts the students read are obsolete, unrepresentative of the student body, and most importantly, irrelevant to their lives. It is absolutely ridiculous to open a 9th grade English textbook with a few poems tucked in the middle written by some African-American authors, an exert from Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, and a poem from Sandra Cisneros. The dropout rate among inner-city school minority students can begin to decline with a multicultural literacy education that celebrates the unique multiculturalism of the students. In practice, teachers need to begin by evaluating the texts their students read in order to ensure that there is no dominant voice. Othello, Antigone, and Weathering Heights are good novels, but considering the demographic most of us teach, we should also include Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, and Joy Harjo ever once in a while.