By Norm Johnson
March 24, 2009
As District residents face new economic challenges, the D.C. unemployment rate just out is sobering news. The D.C. unemployment rate increased to 9.3 percent in January-higher than in 43 states, as well as higher than the national rate.
And the D.C. rate masks the fact that the tragedy of involuntary job losses is not felt evenly among all communities. We know, for example, that the African-American unemployment rate is almost double the rate for whites. No one imagines that the picture in D.C., if we had the data, would look any different.
But an intelligent response to the bad economic news that is sweeping across some of our most deprived neighborhoods requires us to look deeper into the data.
Of the over 15 million African-Americans working across the nation, the overwhelming majority graduated from high school. Indeed, the higher level of educational attainment among African-American women is one of the reasons why overall more women have jobs than men among African-Americans nationally. Over one and a half million more black women work than black men.
The plain and painful truth is that the educational achievement gap between black and white students casts a shadow for children over their adult lives. In the District, black public secondary school students are half as likely to score at grade level or higher in reading as their white peers. This places black students at a disadvantage when they graduate high school-big time if they fail to graduate.
In any labor market-especially one as challenging as today's-the harshest consequences are reserved for those who are least prepared. The unemployment rate for black men aged 20 to 24 without a high-school diploma is a staggering 55 percent. For those aged 19 to 20 the rate is a heartbreaking 91 percent.
When we look at unemployment among African-American college graduates, the picture becomes crystal clear. The unemployment rate of black college graduates last year was four percent: lower than the national rate.
The benefits to the individual-and society-of being a college graduate go beyond employment to encompass earnings and careers: African-Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher earn more than twice as much as their peers who have less than a high school diploma. They have the building blocks that create careers that are rewarding for them and for society as a whole.
By contrast, of those who fail-and are failed by urban education systems-to become proficient readers, a dismal future awaits. One in three District residents are functionally illiterate, unable to fully function in our society. The opportunities for such individuals is extremely limited anywhere in the nation but all the more so in the District because here over half of all jobs require college or advanced degrees, compared to only one in four nationally.
Fortunately, many vulnerable District children are getting an essential head start. D.C.'s public charter schools are educating three times as many black students to be proficient readers as the city-run public schools.
The District's public charter schools also have much higher rates of high school graduation and college acceptance. Many of these unique public schools send close to or fully 100 percent of their students to college.
As D.C. grapples with a weak economy that has hurt our city more than many predicted-and hit African-Americans harder than most-we should build on what we know works.
That education is essential to the progress of my community should not be news. What was it that the abolitionists used to say? "To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave."
Norm Johnson is headmaster of the IDEA Public Charter High School in the District of Columbia.