African American men are falling behind their peers in the classroom. PBS reports only 54% of African Americans graduate from high school, compared to more than 75% of their Caucasian and Asian American peers.
When checking the data to ensure that the data represented is correct, I looked at the statistic that ‘54% of African Americans graduate from high school’ suggesting low achievement for those in education. To figure out if this information was correct, I searched the internet for the official American statistics in regards to African American Achievement of graduation in high school. The official American statistical website is the ‘National Centre for education statistics’, in which the statistics show that African Americans take up 73% of graduates from 2013-14. Therefore, the official statistics suggest that the statistics in the article are false. This creates a false perception of the amount of African American graduates, suggesting that the figure is lower than the actual amount. The method’s that have gone into producing the headline are incorrect as they have accessed their information from an organisational blog (http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/10/troubling-statistics-for-african-american-males-in-the-classroom/ ). This is not appropriate as it does not provide official governmental statistics or evidence from a source that is official, as evidence to where this figure has been accumulated from.
Overall this headline is misleading and conveys the wrong message. To create an alternative headline which would more accurately reflect research findings; it would be appropriate to change the figure in the headline to ‘73’. However, the aim of the headline is to suggest a poor achievement of African Americans and this would not achieve its aim.