Low graduation rates a crime

Marvin Arrington has done it again.

As promised, the Atlanta judge, who caused a stir recently when he ordered white people out of his courtroom so he could lecture black defendants about what they need to do to turn around their lives, repeated that lecture in his Fulton County courtroom.

But this time, he did it before an integrated audience.

“I was moved by what Dr. Vernon Johns once said: ‘If you see a good fight, get in it,’ ” Arrington told me, recounting the words of the fiery preacher who preceded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as pastor of Dexter Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

The good fight Arrington is talking about got a big dose of national attention a few days ago when America’s Promise Alliance, an organization created by Colin Powell, issued a report on high school graduation rates in the nation’s 50 largest cities. The 14-page document is a chilling picture of the rot eating away at our society.

Just 24.9 percent of students graduate on time in Detroit, the city with the worst graduation rate. Only 30.5 percent graduate in Indianapolis, 34.1 percent in Cleveland, 34.6 percent in Baltimore and 40.9 percent in Columbus, Ohio. In Atlanta, the graduation rate is 46 percent.

Many students who don’t graduate on time drop out of school, Arrington believes. In the six years he’s been on the bench, the Superior Court judge said, he’s seen a long procession of defendants who lack a high school degree – and the knowledge and skills they need to find work.

In his courtroom lecture to the black defendants, Arrington, who is black himself, sounded more like a frustrated father than a judge.

“I thought I would challenge them to do better,” he recalled. “I told them if you’re not in school, if you’re not being trained for a job, you’re not going to be able to compete – and you’re likely to end up in jail.”

Arrington said he’s been delivering that same message to other young black defendants, most of whom are high school dropouts. If they’re found guilty, Arrington requires them to enter a GED program as part of their punishment.

He’s got the right idea. While the America’s Promise Alliance report doesn’t link low graduation rates to criminal acts by young blacks, there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest a connection.

In Raleigh, N.C., Laurence Alvin Lovette, 17, and Demario Atwater, 21, who allegedly killed the University of North Carolina’s student government president, are high school dropouts with long arrest records.

Zahir Boddy-Johnson, 17, of North Philadelphia, also dropped out of school. He was arrested again this year after being ordered to pay restitution last year to a city police detective whose Jeep he had tried to steal, according to police in Philadelphia. His alleged crime this time: Shooting a Housing Authority policeman as part of a robbery to get money to pay the restitution.

Last year, 17-year-old dropout Lataye King, of Baltimore, was sentenced to life in prison, with all but 25 years suspended, for her part in the stabbing death of a teenager who was killed for her cell phone.

These are the people Arrington is trying to warn away from a life of crime before they are convicted of a serious offense.

“It’s just insanity, and they don’t see it,” he said of their behavior.

Maybe even more worrisome is the possibility that what he’s grappling with in Atlanta is the tip of a very big iceberg – one submerged in that alarming report on graduation rates.