BLACK MALE DROPOUT RATE IS GREETED MOSTLY WITH YAWNS

The research from the Massachusetts-based Schott Foundation on Public Education shows that more than half -- 53 percent -- of black male students drop out of high school without a diploma, compared to 22 percent of white males. It's a stunning statistic that foretells a permanent underclass, forever stuck outside the American mainstream. If I ran the NAACP, the National Urban League or the troubled Southern Christian Leadership Conference, I'd make my single priority hammering away at that awful statistic and working to change the fate of those young black men.

Nothing is more important to the future of black America than reclaiming 53 percent -- more than half -- of its young black men from educational failure, which will lead, inevitably, to unemployment, irresponsible fatherhood and the temptations of crime. If you wanted to guarantee the decline of a community -- or a nation -- in the 21st century, you could hardly do better than to impose academic failure on half its young men.  BLACK MALE DROPOUT RATE