The fact that roughly half of African-American males don’t graduate from North Carolina’s public schools is not only serious, but in my view, it’s immoral. We know well the difficulties that are ahead for those young men, their families, and the communities that will try to assist them over the years. That’s why I am so dsappointed by what I read in this piece from Jane Shaw of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. Shaw attended a recent symposium at Duke that covered the issue of why there are so few black males on college campuses. But, according to Shaw, there was little discussion of the failure of the K-12 system to effectively address the needs of this group of students. Very sad. These kids are trapped in a system that can’t possibly meet the wide range of needs and interests of all kids and their families. And it never will.