Guest Opinion/Commentary*
A Father's Presence - A Far Greater Predictor Of Graduation Than Race Or Class
By Rinaldo Del Gallo, III (03/22/07)
If you look at the front page of the March 1st Pittsfield Gazette (a weekly Pittsfield, MA paper), one reads, “Race, class affect graduation rates.” In the March 14th Berkshire Eagle, the Pittsfield Massachusetts daily paper, the take was on a local community group that had won some grants for local initiatives. According to the Eagle, the grants were “to keep youths, particularly minorities, in school.” As Pittsfield Superintendent Darlington was making presentations to both the school committee and the city council regarding the disparities caused by race and economic class, virtually every local media outlet turned out for the Women of Color Giving Circle press conference. In the mean time, the Berkshire Fatherhood Coalition’s press releases about fatherlessness and the academic gender gap were ignored.
When our schools look at a child that is failing, they first see a black child, they then see poverty, they then see a boy, and they then see a child without a father (if they notice his fatherlessness at all). If we are to be serious about our high school dropout rate, we need to see these children in the reverse—as fatherless first, boys second, poor third, and black fourth. While I cannot possibly cover the entirety of this subject in this letter, the reader is directed to our website (BerkshireFatherhood.com), where there is a lengthy essay with volumes of supporting documents and even some podcast of great interest on this subject.
In Pittsfield, according to the school system’s own numbers as measured by No Child Left Behind, 46.5% of blacks graduated, 40% of Hispanics graduated, as compared to 70.2% for whites. 41.3% of those classified as “low income” also graduated. As dramatic as these numbers may be, they pale by orders of multiples compared to the graduation rates of children from households with and without fathers.
While whites are 1.76 times as likely to graduate than Hispanics from Pittsfield’s schools, according to numbers from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Educational Statistics, children from homes with fathers are nine times more likely to graduate. Assuming the U.S. government’s and the Pittsfield School system’s numbers are correct, as dramatic as the white and Hispanic differential is, these numbers are dwarfed by the father/fatherless fraction by a factor of slightly over five fold. According to the National Principle’s Association, 71% of all dropouts come from fatherless homes. As for local numbers in Pittsfield, local officials have no interest in keeping statistics regarding graduation rates and the presence of fathers, and No Child Left Behind requires no measurements to be kept.
The data are clear. Fatherlessness is a far greater predictor of the likelihood of not graduating from high school than race or poverty status. The first sentence of the Berkshire Eagle article was, “The key to understanding why students drop out of school starts with a basic question: How was your day?” Indeed this is correct. It is a question that most divorced fathers in this country never get to ask, and that is precisely the problem.
NOTE: Corrections 3-28-07
Rinaldo Del Gallo, III
BerkshireFatherhood.com
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*Ed: Views are those of individual authors and not necessarily those of American Daily.
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