Per capita income and high school graduation Why are Clevelanders so poor? "To get a good job, get a good education." To get a lousy job -- or no job -- don't finish high school. Of Cleveland's residents above the age of 25, a stunning 31% have not finished high school or gotten a GED. This percentage is essentially tied with those of Baltimore, Detroit and El Paso; a little better than Los Angeles at 33%; and significantly better than Miami (47%) and Newark (42%)... so it doesn't fully explain Cleveland's last-place showing in personal income. But the maps below clearly show the high degree of correlation between Cleveland census tracts with low per capita incomes (red) and tracts with low percentages of adult high school graduates (blue).
Cleveland's low percentage of high school diplomas among our working-age population isn't new -- we were in pretty much the same position twenty years ago, relative to other large cities. Like all those other cities, we've seen a major increase in the actual graduate percentage since 1980, because high school degrees were much less common for older adults who have passed on in the last twenty years. But with Cleveland public school graduation rates still stuck below 40%, we are adding 2,500 to 3,000 new non-graduates to our young adult population every year... and it's unlikely that all our GED programs together have more than a thousand successful graduates to offset them. |
