Out of School

In 1970 a Massachusetts survey revealed that thousands of school-age children in Boston were not enrolled in the city's public or private schools. Spurred by that report, the Washington-based Children's Defense Fund, a privately financed nonprofit agency, decided to conduct a national survey. After an analysis of 1970 census data and 6,500 personal interviews in nine states, the C.D.F. has now issued its own shocking statistic: some 2 million U.S. children from age seven to 17 are not enrolled in school.

Many of the out-of-school children had one thing in common: poverty. In Floyd County, Ky., for example, 21% of the children C.D.F. interviewed said that their parents could not afford to buy books or pay the required school fees. There was a wide racial and ethnic mix among the children. In the predominantly white Riverton Housing Project in Portland, Me., 11% of all school-age children were not attending school. In one census tract in New Bedford, Mass., 73% of all children of Portuguese descent were out of class. In the Northgate Housing Project in Montgomery, Ala., 27% of all 16-and 17-year-old blacks had not been in school for at least 45 days during the semester.

The 366-page C.D.F. report decried "the rampant use of suspensions and other disciplinary devices to throw children out of school." The survey showed that more than 1 million children were suspended from school last year--blacks at a rate twice as high as whites. In Macon, Ga., a 16-year-old black student was expelled for three months because he could not pay $5 to replace the ruler he had accidentally broken in shop.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.