This Dedicated to Dr. Sam Horton..............

Much is said and written every year about the struggles black students face in school. Black males in particular lead the district in dropping out of middle or high school. Black females are not far behind in those statistics.

Educators have sleepless nights thinking about this problem and how to solve it. We all know there is no singular answer.

And yes….the morons who think blacks have some inferior intellectual genes are still morons.

Let me turn some anecdotal observations into real numbers.

At Erwin Technical Center, the biggest and most popular program, by far, is Licensed Practical Nursing. So many potential students apply for the program that the school has developed a lottery for entrance. And, before a student can qualify for the lottery, he or she must take a Test of Adult Basic Education and score in the highest percentile. Those who are admitted are smart, hardworking types. With quite a grueling curriculum, 90% of all students graduate and immediately attain high-paying jobs.


Now for the Really Good News:

As I walked an upstairs hallway the other day at Erwin, the nursing students were on break. You can always tell nursing students by their uniform. In this hallway filled with nursing students, I noticed many black, female faces. I mean…a lot.

So I went to the front office and asked an Assistant Principal is she had a breakdown of program students by gender and race. Of course, she printed one out immediately.

Turns out, right now, this quinmester, there are 209 nursing students enrolled at Erwin: 27 male and 182 female. Of those students, 39% are black, 30% are white, 22% are Hispanic, and 9% multi-racial.

As you can see, black students dominate total enrollments, and total minority enrollments outnumber whites.

And who said black or Hispanic students cannot succeed equally to whites?

All this leads me to believe we have hope for a secure future and the knuckle draggers are becoming extinct. My wife and I were friends of Dr. Horton.....and he'd be proud of this news. He did a lot of work to make these stats happen!!!!

posted by admin @ 4:57 PM