York public schools it is 45%. For comparison, the overall graduation rate for white students in these same fifty school districts is 76%. That is, the overwhelming majority of white students graduate from high school, while the majority of African American students, and in cities like Detroit the overwhelming majority, do not graduate. This is a clear and dramatic failure by the government to see that all students receive the high quality education necessary to be meaningful and thriving participants in the economic and political life of the country. The reasons for the failure to graduate these high numbers of African American and Latino students are complex, but they include actions by the schools themselves – discriminatory disciplinary systems or other policies or actions that encourage those students to leave school before graduation. These schools have not embraced as their mission providing high quality education to all of their students. Differential graduation rates in terms of race and ethnicity are a critical measure of school system failures. There is another useful measure that school districts and local governments utilize – test results and improvement in test results. But by definition, that data only apply to the students that are in school and cannot reveal the fact that so many of the students are not in