Hispanic-Americans.com | Hispanic News and Information

To be counted or not to be counted? That’s the question facing millions of Latinos as the 2010 Census forms are mailed out starting this month. What we decide will move billions of dollars and could shift the balance of power in Congress. It’s no surprise then, that most of this year’s Census news is all about us—from a raging controversy over whether any Latinos should allow themselves to be counted, to a spicy telenovela ad campaign the Census Bureau hopes will convince us to participate.

Starting last fall, the nationwide count sparked a huge brouhaha. On one hand, the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders (CONLAMIC) began asking Latinos—especially undocumented immigrants—not to participate in any Census until Congress passes immigration reform. Part of their complaint: The reform issue is being ignored, as our elected officials focus on health care, the economy and Afghanistan. There is also fear that Census data will be used to target Latino areas for immigration crackdowns. “We are saying to people, ‘Do not open the door, do not respond to the questionnaire, don’t expose yourself more,’ ” says the boycott’s spokesman and CONLAMIC president, the Reverend Miguel Rivera.

But other Latino leaders, including the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO), are against the boycott, calling it “flawed logic” and “irresponsible.”  They’ve created a coalition in favor of the Census: Ya Es Hora / Hágase Contar. Targeting Hispanics—especially those in newly emerging Latino neighborhoods across the nation, such as Georgia, Nevada, Utah and South Carolina—the campaign educates and motivates Latinos to participate through a combination of grassroots community organizing and Spanish-language programming.

In Congress, some conservatives want to include only citizens in the Census—leaving out at least 12 million Latinos. Democrats recently blocked such a proposal by Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter. Some Census supporters say not counting the undocumented would hark back to the time when African American slaves counted for only three-fifths of a person and Native Americans didn’t count at all.

POST COMMENTS BELOW

LATINA.COM

http://latina.com/lifestyle/news-politics/final-countdown-2010-census

ARLINGTON, Texas -- Manny Pacquiao is an international star, but there was a time when boxing's current pound-for-pound champion toiled in anonymity.

When Pacquiao left his native Philippines for his first bout in the United States, he was an unknown fighter searching for an American trainer to help him for his 2001 bout against Lehlohonolo Ledwaba in Las Vegas.

He no longer deals with being unknown. Everybody knows his name. Traveling under the radar is a thing of the past. His party of 130 uses a private jet. Trainer Freddie Roach is always at his side.

On Saturday night, in the biggest and most expensive stadium in sports, Pacquiao gets to show why he's the best fighter in the world when he faces Joshua Clottey in front of a sellout crowd of 45,000 at Cowboys Stadium.

"He's been here since 2001, and he's been fighting nothing but the best," said trainer Emanuel Steward, who is a fight analyst for HBO. "I don't recall a fighter -- maybe Sonny Liston -- who comes into a fight with so much attention. He fights everybody. He fights hall of fame fighters. You don't see that too often."

He has fought the best and beaten the best. Bouts with Erik Morales, Juan Manuel Marquez, Marco Antonio Barrera, Oscar De La Hoya and Ricky Hatton are part of his impressive résumé. In his last fight, he stopped Miguel Cotto in the 12th round to win his seventh title in seven weight classes.

Fight fans have noticed.

[+] Enlarge

Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty ImagesPacquiao is beloved in his native Philippines and around the world.

A June 2008 fight in which Pacquiao knocked out David Diaz grossed $12.5 million and sold 250,000 pay-per-view telecasts.

His fight against Hatton in 2009 generated a live gate of $8.83 million and produced $50 million in pay-per-view buys.

In his last fight -- versus Cotto on Nov. 14, 2009 -- 1.25 million pay-per-view purchases helped generate $470 million in sales.

"He's an unbelievable star," said Mark Taffet, a senior vice president with HBO Sports, which broadcasts all of Pacquiao's fights in the United States. "You look at the numbers, and they're unheard of for a person of his weight class."

Pacquiao's seven titles have come in classes ranging from flyweight to welterweight. His style resembles that of classic Mexican fighters, who displayed punishing power, head movement and quick hands.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, when visiting Mexico with promoter Bob Arum, said he was stunned at how many fans knew Pacquiao.

"Our goal when we started with Manny was to break him out from the Filipino base that he had," Arum said. "We were able to pick up millions of Hispanic fans, and we have broken him into the general conscience of the people around the world. He is truly a crossover star. How many fighters of our time go on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' and go on 'Good Morning America' and have a big article coming out in Time magazine? I think that is saying something."

[+] Enlarge

Jeoffrey Maitem/Getty ImagesThe next step for Pacquiao? Boxing's pound-for-pound champ will run for Congress in the Philippines, starting March 26.

And Pacquiao's fans aren't just Hispanic. Filipino fans have traveled far to see their hero. Even Cowboys wide receiver Roy Williams, a causal boxing fan, said he would follow Pacquiao to any fight during the offseason.

When this fight is over, Pacquiao has said that he'll run for Congress in the Philippines because he's tired of the social ills of his country. That has raised concerns about whether Pacquiao is truly focused on Saturday's fight.

"I'm not there yet," Pacquiao told ESPN Dallas when asked whether he might retire. "That's down the line. For now, I'm ready for this fight."

Pacquiao officially starts his campaign March 26.

"It is going to be busy," he said. "I want to pass some bills that will be good for the livelihood of the people there and education for the children."

But first he has to fight Clottey, who is no stranger to the big stage. He lost a split decision to Cotto last June and isn't an easy opponent.

"This is a very close fight," Steward said. "I like Manny in this fight, but not by much. He should win because that's what stars do."

POST COMMENTS BELOW

ESPN.COM

http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/columns/story?columnist=watkins_calvin&id=4987808

It's been a brawl for years, this education culture war that seems to take on a particularly vicious turn in the heart of Texas. The latest and most important round, a drastic revision of the social studies curriculum standards to put a conservative spin on history and economics textbooks, was given preliminary approval after a series of heated meetings of the Texas Board of Education that didn't do much to improve the image of the nation's second largest state as a sometimes small-minded political and educational backwater.

In a matter of days last week in Austin, the majority of the 15-member board, insisting they were only trying to offset liberal bias in textbooks, questioned Darwin's theory of evolution and the constitutional principle of separation of church and state; debated hip-hop and genocide in Darfur; deleted Albert Einstein and Thomas Alva Edison from textbooks; emphasized Christian teachings and fundamentalist values; adopted conservative articles of faith like American exceptionalism; promoted right-wing leaders and organizations like Phyllis Schlafly and the National Rifle Association; and refused to give adequate attention to Hispanic and African American contributions to U.S. and Texas history.

To no one's surprise, on the final round on Friday, the conservatives pulled a decisive victory, 10-5 -- a tally that broke along predictable party lines, Republicans to the right, Democrats to the left. Ethnic minority members stood on the losing side. According to published reports, no experts on the social sciences were consulted. Given the conservative cast of the board, whose members are elected, the changes it has proposed will stand when the final vote is taken in May.

Leaving the meeting, a Democratic board member, Mavis Knight, of Dallas, was fulminating, saying, she could not be a party to "perpetrating this fraud on the students of this state." It was not a pretty sight. The board will surely become, or has already become, the butt of jokes on late-night shows and "Saturday Night Live."

But this is not a local squabble or a local issue. It's not a colorful shoot 'em up in the Texas corral. It so happens that the Texas board is perhaps the most influential in the country. Its guidelines will affect not only the 4.7 million Texas public school students but will likely spread to many other states, from kindergarten to 12th grade for the next 10 years. Texas textbook standards are usually adopted by publishers because the state will buy 48 million of them every year, and many other states -- 47 by some counts -- will follow that model. In light of those figures, publishers will happily take their cue from the Lone Star State.

All in all, it has been a turbulent few weeks for public education in America.

On Saturday, President Obama called for major changes in the Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, proposing to measure students' and schools' progress not on test scores alone but also on such metrics as attendance, graduation rates and learning environment, according to the New York Times. The president's educational blueprint, which he will send to the Congress on Monday, will fulfill a campaign promise to overhaul the federal law, which affects the nation's nearly 100,000 public schools, the Times reported.

Obama's move comes after the National Governors Association last week proposed tougher nationwide school standards with an eye to raising the world standing of the United States in math and science education. The proposals, which emphasize writing and reasoning skills, set out to prepare students to succeed in college. Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia participated in setting the proposed standards, according to published reports. But this proposal is just that, a proposal. It's not a done deal.

In Rhode Island, a school board fired the entire faculty of a school that had not been performing up to par. The dismissal of 93 teachers and staff in Central Falls was shocking enough to the community and the school system. But what brought the firings to national attention was President Obama's support of the board's decision, which he saw as a major step in holding schools and teachers accountable.

A storm of charges and counter-charges followed, pitting the powerful teachers unions against the president whose candidacy the unions supported with sweat and money in 2008. Oddly, conservatives and Obama landed on the same side, with conservatives backing the move for holding a school responsible for failure. Whatever the outcome of the controversy, the Central Falls decision is likely to affect hundreds of school districts which are under pressure from the federal government to change or risk losing funds.

Following on the heels of Central Falls, the city of Boston demanded that staff members at six failing schools reapply for their jobs. The city was acting, like Central Falls, to meet the requirements of the Obama Administration's turnaround program, which expects failing schools to change by lengthening the school day, converting to charter schools, firing staff, or closing altogether.

The Kansas City Board of Education didn't have to pick among those choices when it voted on Wednesday to close half the city's public schools -- not necessarily because the schools were performing poorly, but because the system faced falling enrollment, smaller budgets and a $50 million deficit. They call it the Right-Size plan, and it will close 28 of the city's 61 schools and trim 700 of 3,000 jobs. Where the school children will go, no one really knows. For Kansas City, it was yet another blow to its public schools.

Back in Austin, initial reports of the board vote on Friday drew a flood of comments on the web site of the Austin American-Statesman. One of the earlier salvos -- "them white folks sure is crazy!" -- spoke volumes for the one side. It echoed the words of a frustrated board member, Mary Helen Berlanga, who was quoted by the New York Times as saying as she walked out of a meeting, "They can't just pretend this is a white America, and Hispanics don't exist."

And that's how it went.

POST COMMENTS BELOW

POLITICSDAILY.COM

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/14/history-revised-teachers-sacked-the-book-wars-in-texas-and-bey/

Maybe there’s a game on. The President had three meetings on immigration reform at the White House today.  He is increasingly under pressure to act on promises he made as a candidate to enact immigration reform in his first year in office and, now in his second year, the patience of pro-reform advocates – and Latino and immigrant voters – is wearing thin.

The power of the Latino vote is a big reason the Democrats won the White House and control of both houses of Congress in 2008.  If the Democrats fail to address the immigration issue – an issue to which Latino voters are particularly sensitive and which helped drive their increased turnout in 2008 – the Democrats face even longer odds with voters in 2010.

The President met with Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who are leading the effort to introduce an immigration bill in the Senate and their meeting was sandwiched between two others.  The first was with a group of pro-reform advocates, including labor unions, a Catholic Bishop, and local and national ethnic, civil rights, student, and immigrant advocacy groups.  They had expected to meet with White House staff and ended up meeting with the President himself – a meeting he chaired.  The President’s last meeting of the day was with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and was planned to discuss both health care and immigration.

All of this comes at a particularly busy time as Congress prepares for the Easter recess.  The President is embarking on a major international trip (Indonesia and Australia, he leaves next week), is in the throes of a major public relations push for his health care proposal, and is trying to keep the focus on jobs and the economy.  Yet, he took almost an entire day to dig into immigration reform, an agenda item many thought – and some hoped – was dead.

Each of these meetings revealed something about the bind the President is in over immigration: he is already spread thin on other issues, but there are significant pressures on him to act, there are significant political benefits to acting, there are real costs to inaction, and meanwhile, Latinos in general and immigrants are not just feeling ignored, they are feeling betrayed as deportations escalate and communities continue to suffer.

Schumer & Graham

The meeting the press was prepared to cover was the one between the President and the best incarnation of the Odd Couple since Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon.  Senators Schumer and Graham were supposed to meet with President Obama on Monday afternoon, but it was delayed when Senator Graham’s flight from South Carolina was cancelled.  But at this point, delays are par for the course.  Over the summer, Senator Schumer assured the press and supporters of reform that he would introduce a bipartisan bill after Labor Day.  Now, almost six months later, he looks poised – again – to do so.  Senator Graham played a key role in getting an immigration bill passed in the Senate in 2006 and was one of the few helpful Republicans when a bill failed in the Senate in 2007.  However, he appears to be the only Republican to be stepping up to the plate this year.

Not much detail has been released about the Schumer/Graham proposal, but it is likely to track fairly closely to previous bipartisan efforts at compromise: 1) Stepped up border and interior enforcement targeting smugglers, criminals, and employers; 2) A worker verification system to allow employers to easily determine who can and can’t work legally in the U.S.; 3) A process for getting people who have been waiting for permission to come to the U.S. legally through the processing backlog that can stretch to 20 years currently; 4) Legal immigration channels for workers and family members as an alternative to illegal immigration; and 5) A requirement that people who are in the country illegally register with the government, pay fines, pass a criminal background check, and fulfill other criteria to get legal status that would eventually allow them to apply for U.S. citizenship like other immigrants.

The details will matter, both in terms of its political viability and – more importantly – whether it will work to solve our immigration issues.  Items like a mandatory trip out of the country for legalizing immigrants to “touch back” in their country of origin – a silly part of previous bills meant to somehow “reboot” the person’s legal status by making them leave and come back – is reportedly not part of the Schumer/Graham proposal.  The Wall Street Journal “broke” the story this week that the employer verification system in the bill would resemble a “national ID” of some sort, but it is unclear what that will entail.  In every bipartisan immigration bill that has gotten traction in recent years, a system similar to the E-Verify verification system has been slated for mandatory use by all employers for all employees, but Senator Schumer, a fan of a national ID, may have more in mind.

But it seems the President is prepared to back what the two Senators come up with.  In a statement after the meeting, the President said:

I told both the senators and the community leaders that my commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is unwavering, and that I will continue to be their partner in this important effort.

Nice words, but the community leaders he met with want more.  This week, they began ratcheting up the rhetoric.  The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) put out a video last week in English and Spanish with the President, as a candidate in July 2008, promising to address immigration, saying:

I think it’s time for a President who won’t walk away from something as important as comprehensive reform when it becomes politically unpopular.

And advocates have also been organizing the March for America, which promises to bring tens of thousands of immigration reform supporters to the National Mall on March 21.  Mr. Obama, who marched with the immigration reform movement in Chicago against the 2005/2006 House Republican anti-immigrant bill, knows the power of an immigration reform rally.

The advocates who have united under the banner of the Reform Immigration for America (RI4A) campaign – a coalition of labor unions, faith groups, progressive, student, ethnic, civil rights, business, and immigrant groups – want the President to make a firm commitment to support the Schumer/Graham bill and help push it through the Congress this year.

The Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, and a key leader of the RI4A campaign, said after the meeting between the advocates and the President:

We had a lively and straightforward meeting with the President and his staff. We made clear that we expect him to keep his promise to overhaul our broken immigration system…The President indicated that his administration is committed to driving a bill forward in the spring of 2010. Based on our conversation, we are optimistic and expecting aggressive and urgent action from the White House on comprehensive immigration reform before March 21.

While the President and his aides are feeling the pressure the community leaders are putting on him – which will be escalated in volume and visibility at the March for America, it is the reality of what is going on immigrant communities in the absence of reform that really got the President’s attention this week.

Deportation Nation

A press conference Monday, organized by the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), a subset of community-based pro-immigrant advocacy coalitions, put the cost of inaction on immigration in sharp relief.

They documented how the number of deportations have escalated to an astounding 387,000 per year under President Obama.  That’s more than 1,000 per day and a population the size of Minneapolis or Tulsa every year.  Deportations are ripping apart families, destabilizing communities and forcing businesses to close.  Add to this the deplorable conditions in which we hold immigration detainees, the brutality with which we apprehend people, and the complete inflexibility of our legal system, and you have a deportation crisis.

Since we will never deport our way out of our current mess, many people would like to see a cessation of deportations until reform is passed.  Some of the advocates – who were invited to the White House after their presentation at the Monday press conference – made this plea directly to the President.

It would be nearly impossible for him to order the federal government not to be enforce federal laws.  His administration has argued that is targeting enforcement resources specifically at serious criminals and other high-risk immigrants – and not just average workers and family members who are in the country illegally.  The reality is that while there have been some changes, enforcement is happening at a furious pace.  He is not likely to call off the dogs, but, again, the important question is how much of himself and his political capital he is will to expend to change the laws and relieve the needless suffering of immigrant communities.

The CHC’s Hardball

Which brings us back to politics. The President’s last meeting of the day was with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. They have been playing hardball, floating the possibility this week that they would withhold their support for the President’s health care proposal if the treatment of immigrants and Latinos was not addressed in the bill and if they did not get assurance that immigration reform would be a top priority for the President.

Some may say this is an idle threat, but for the past couple of years, the Hispanic Caucus has been able to play a bigger and bigger role in the immigration debate.  Essentially, the Caucus has withheld support for any immigration-related measure unless it was comprehensive.  They have not allowed agriculture, high-tech, hospitality, and other business sectors to advance their agenda on immigration without including broader reforms to address the immigrants here illegally, family immigration, and broader worker visa issues.  The notoriously fractious Caucus has remained extraordinarily cohesive in this effort.

More importantly, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus represents the power of the Latino voter in the American electorate.  Between 2004 and 2008, the Hispanic electorate grew by 30%, adding more than two million voters. Latinos make up 25% or more of the electorate in 79 Congressional districts (54 currently held by Dems, 25 by Rs) and over 40 close House and Senate races could be won or lost on the strength of the Latino vote this year.  Not only that, but the potential size of the Latino vote is growing quickly, partly through immigration, but mostly because about 400,000 Latino citizens reach age 18 each year.

But while Democrats enjoy an advantage with immigrant voters – mostly because of the harsh GOP rhetoric on immigration – they are by no means solid a Democratic constituency. Latino Decisions, a polling firm, released a report late last year that indicated Obama and the Democrats are losing the broad support they once had among Latino voters.

In 2008, the Latino vote increased more than any other segment of the population and was a crucial part of Obama’s coalition, especially in Nevada, Florida, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, and even Indiana. However if Congress does not act on immigration reform and pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that includes a pathway to citizenship, many Latino voters may think twice about voting Democrat in 2010 or 2012.

Many Latino voters in 2008 were new voters – those who registered and voted for the first time, many of whom were new citizens spurred to get citizenship and become voters, again, by the harsh rhetoric of the Republicans.  It is not clear that the level of enthusiasm displayed by these voters will be sustained through 2010 when there is already a natural drop in voter participation because there is no Presidential race.

One statistic from New York is troubling.  New voters – those who had cast their first ballot in 2008 – were among those least likely to vote in the New York City Mayor’s race, according to a research study conducted by City University of New York’s John Mollenkopf, reported on this weekend by the New York Daily News,

Just one in five of 2008’s first-time voters cast ballots in November – 71,335 of 338,128. While 39% of New Yorkers who voted in 2008 also voted in 2009, turnout was just 21% for people who had cast their first ballots a year earlier.

This could be the strength of the candidate or the race, but first time voters are notoriously unlikely second time voters, especially if they don’t feel their vote made a difference.

In the case of Latino voters, many who watch voter turnout and mobilization closely are concerned that the growing electorate from 2008 could deflate significantly in 2010.  Clarissa Martinez de Castro of the National Council of La Raza observed:

The millions of Latinos who voted for the first time in 2008, and those who went through the arduous citizenship process to get that privilege, need to see that participating in the democratic process means something. Many had the expectation that their vote would help speed up the day when we got serious immigration reform enacted and now their patience is wearing thin. We must not lose momentum or let the Latino community’s unprecedented civic engagement wither. As we look toward November, we don’t care what party people vote for, but we do care that people vote and see that their vote has meaning and leads to action.

Both parties have an interest in engaging the electorate in the democratic process and both parties could make a play for the Latino vote or parts of the Latino vote (though the Republicans have a lot of damage to undo).  In the short-run, this President stands to gain a great deal from energizing the Latino electorate by working with Congress to move immigration reform legislation and get a bill introduced, debated, and hopefully passed by the time voters go to the polls.  It is only out of reach if the GOP flatly refuses to work on a bipartisan basis on any legislation, because there are Republican Senators and Representatives who would support reform.  One more thing would keep it out of reach: if the President and his fellow Democrats don’t choose to push for it.

POST COMMENTS BELOW

NEWSJUNKIEPOST.COM

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/03/12/stakes-getting-higher-for-obama-latino-voters-and-immigration/

Community leaders and celebrities announced a new multimedia campaign in Los Angeles on Wednesday aimed at getting young Latinos to participate in the U.S. Census.

During the news conference at Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, speakers invited students to download an interactive mobile application, to participate in a texting campaign (text “LA” to 738674) and to spread the word to family and friends about the importance of the census.

“Your voice literally does matter,” actress Rosario Dawson told students in the campus library. “You have the right to live with dignity in your communities. This is the opportunity to fight for that.”

Dawson and actor Wilmer Valderrama joined leaders of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Voto Latino and the California Community Foundation to show public service announcements and hand out census-themed I-tunes cards to students.

Throughout the month, the community groups will visit schools in hard-to-count neighborhoods of the county to talk about the census and the multimedia campaign.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- This could be the year that the number of babies born to minorities in America outnumbers babies born to whites.

That's because immigration has boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years. Hispanic women have an average 2.99 children to 1.87 among white women. In 2008, 48 percent of the children born in the U.S. were minorities.

Sociology professor Kenneth Johnson of the University of New Hampshire says by mid-century, census projections suggest that America "may become a minority-majority country." But at the moment, whites make up two-thirds of the total population.

The birth numbers highlight the nation's growing racial and age divide. There are strong implications for the 2010 population count, which begins in earnest next week.

POST COMMENTS BELOW

WGME.COM

http://www.wgme.com/template/inews_wire/wires.national/3ddb80fc-www.wgme.com.shtml

For the fifth year in a row, New York City students’ on-time graduation rates have increased, showing small but steady gains, rising to 59 percent last year from 46.5 for the class of 2005, according to figures that state and city education officials released on Tuesday.

In 2008, 56.4 percent of the city’s students graduated within four years.

Over all, the state graduation rate has also climbed incrementally: roughly 72 percent of the class of 2009 graduated on time, compared with 66 percent in 2005. But the improvements appeared to have slowed, increasing less than one percentage point from the 71 percent of students who graduated on time in 2008.

While Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg acknowledged that more improvements were needed, he appeared jubilant during a news conference at the Education Department’s headquarters.

“The results for New York City are historic,” the mayor said. “If this doesn’t put a smile on everybody in New York’s face, I don’t know what will.”

As he jumped enthusiastically from one chart to the next, Mr. Bloomberg emphasized that the city was outpacing the rest of the state in graduation rate improvements. And he was eager to make a connection between the improvements and his takeover of the city schools. Graduation rates hovered around 50 percent from 1992 to 2002, according to the city’s figures.

“For 10 years — nothing happened,” he said. “There is still big room for improvement. Nobody should think the job is done. The job will never be done, but we’re on the right track.”

Praise from David Steiner, the state education commissioner, for the state over all was more tempered. He said the fact that nearly a third of students did not graduate on time was “unacceptable.”

“Once again the results are too low,” Mr. Steiner said at a news conference in Albany.

The figures also show that just 45 percent of the city’s students are graduating with a Regents diploma, which requires that students pass several subject-based tests. Soon everyone will have to pass the Regents test to receive a diploma. Mr. Bloomberg said that he supported raising the standards and that the school system would work to help more students pass the exams.

Mr. Bloomberg called the improvements for Hispanic students the “most dramatic success story” among all ethnic groups, although just over half of Hispanic students graduated on time. Black students did slightly better, with 54 percent of students graduating by last June. And the so-called achievement gap persists: among white students, 74 percent earned their diploma on time, and 77 percent of Asian students did so.

Among all ethnic groups, girls are significantly outperforming boys, according to the state statistics. For example, 62 percent of black girls graduated on time, compared with 49 percent of black boys.

Once again, students still learning English or receiving special education services continued to lag far behind their peers. Less than 40 percent of English language learners graduated on time in June 2009, and less than 25 percent of special education students did so.

Mr. Steiner and Mr. Bloomberg emphasized the increases in five- and six-year graduation rates, saying they showed that more students were willing to stay in school to earn their diplomas even if it took them a bit longer than they hoped.

“Persistence pays off,” Mr. Steiner said. “We need to encourage kids to stay in school a fifth year if they need it.”

The state has also begun to count students who graduate in August. By that measure, 63 percent of New York City students graduated in four years.

POST COMMENTS BELOW

NYTIMES.COM

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/nyregion/10graduation.html