Porter High School, Brownsville, Texas

The Brownsville School District is among the poorest inside the nation, with 94% of students qualifying totally free or lowered lunches district-wide. Town itself has the highest poverty level inside the nation, with 36.3% of its locals living at or under the poverty line and also a whopping 12.5% devoid of a job. Mainly because Brownsville is often a border town, quite a few Porter High School students are current immigrants and 43% are nevertheless studying English  When the neighborhood could be poor plus the schools may well have particularly restricted sources, test scores are holding steady within this area. In truth, the school district was lately awarded the $1 million dollar Broad Prize for Urban Education for generating academic advances, a sum that could be divided up involving the district’s seniors for college scholarships. Porter High School is aspect of this surprising amount of achievement, as its students did properly on standardized tests, with proficiency of 70% in math, 79% in reading, 77% in science, and 95% in social studies.

Paul Robeson High School, Chicago, Illinois

Chicago’s South Side boasts many of the most risky communities inside the USA  with gang violence claiming the lives of dozens of high school and middle school students annually. The city’s Robeson High School, positioned inside the infamous Englewood neighborhood, ranks among the lowest performing schools inside the U.S., as outlined by information from Neighborhood Scout, with just 2% proficient in reading and 5% in math. It is not the only school around the South Side to produce the list, with Harper High School and Englewood Technical Prep also getting pitifully low scores. Robeson’s poor functionality and budgetary difficulties may well be resulting from exactly where the school is positioned, as Englewood is among the poorest Chicago neighborhoods. As outlined by City-Data.com 43% of Englewood residents reside under the poverty line plus the median revenue is just $22,131. Generating points even tougher on this currently struggling school? About 31% with the school’s students are coming from single-parent residences plus the neighborhood led the city in homicides final year, using a substantial quantity of each the perpetrators plus the victims getting higher school students.

Reading, Pennsylvania, Reading Senior High School

Reading has created headlines not too long ago, but not in any way the struggling city would prefer to do so. Current Census Bureau information revealed it because the poorest city in America, together with the biggest share of residents living in poverty for any city of its size, a figure that stands at a staggering 41.3%. In decline for the previous decade, the city slipped into despair together with the departure with the big industries that had helped to sustain it, plus the education technique is reflecting these struggles. At Reading Senior High School, just about 89% of students qualify totally free or lowered lunches, up from just 44% in 2003. The financial woes with the neighborhood haven’t helped test scores, either, with only 27% of students performing at a proficient level in math and 43% in reading. Aggravation together with the school technique may well be aspect with the explanation this school has such higher drop-out prices, using a distressing 50% of students leaving school ahead of finding their diplomas.