Faux Statistics Proffered

In Dean’s speech today on higher education he offered the fact that one in three students will not make it to graduation before dropping out. It must have been believed that the crowd would overlook this with the slew of numbers shot at them. Dean also attempted to attribute this “increase” in dropouts to the Bush Administration. Could have fooled me… The November report from the National Center for Education Statistics reports that the rate is at an historic low for non-Hispanic whites, with only 7 percent of students not attending school. The high rates for Hispanics is in part the result of the high proportion of immigrants in this age group that never attended school in the U.S. Asian/Pacific Islanders, with a dropout rate of 4 percent, had the lowest dropout rate among all racial and ethnic groups. The gap between non-Hispanic Blacks and Whites is also being bridged, with the current rate down to 10.9%.

The Child Trends Data Bank offers the insight that : “The dropout rates of Hispanics vary greatly by how long they have been in the United States. In fact, much of the gap between Hispanics and other racial and ethnic groups appears to be due to the high dropout rate among Hispanics born outside of the United States (43 percent in 2001). This rate is almost three times the rate of first-generation Hispanics born in the United States (at 15 percent). ”

Sounds to me like to solve this problem he’d have to end immigration and border hopping…(that is IF the dropout rate were something so grievous as 33.3%)

Another highlight was when Dean stated that if anyone worked hard enough they would be able to attend college. This comment may have marginalized human ability and capacity. Inherent capabilities don’t play a role in this perfect world of Dean’s. Every child is entitled to $10,000 per year as well…This in the same breath as “we’re balancing this budget”, “we’re taking away this $400 billion in credit-card debt”.

*by “credit-card debt” he meant the budget deficit, clever colloquialism.