Only 21 percent of black males and 22 percent of white males who enter Indianapolis public high schools graduate four years later, making the city’s schools the worst in the nation for male graduation rates. Half of black male dropouts and 10 percent of white male dropouts have criminal records.

A Chicago teacher’s blog attacking students and colleagues has provoked anger and driven the teacher out of the classroom.

Typing rambling screeds in an anonymous blog he called “Fast Times at Regnef High,” a Fenger High School teacher unleashed his frustration over the chaos he saw around him.

He labeled his students “criminals,” saying they stole from teachers, dealt drugs in the hallways, had sex in the stairwells, flaunted their pregnant bellies and tossed books out windows. He dismissed their parents as unemployed “project” dwellers who subsist on food stamps, refuse to support their “baby mommas” and bad-mouth teachers because their no-show teens are flunking.

He took swipes at his colleagues, too–”union-minimum” teachers, literacy specialists who “decorate their office door with pro-black propaganda,” and security officers whose “loyalty is to the hood, not the school.”

When his identity leaked out, the teacher received threats and stopped coming to work.

The animosity stirred up by the blog fueled even more chaos in this beleaguered all-black school in Roseland on the city’s Far South Side, among Chicago’s worst performing. But the principal said the episode has galvanized the school in a way he had not thought possible–and is encouraging staff and students to talk openly about the problems and how to fix them.

Principal William Johnson plans student forums “to discuss the blog, both the antagonism it revealed and the challenges that need to be fixed.” Some of the bloggers’ charges are true, the principal said.

Cory Booker, a black Democrat running for mayor of Newark, New Jersey, supports school vouchers because the Newark schools are such a mess. So Booker’s foes are running ads blaming him for Hurricane Katrina, notes Hit and Run.

BTW, isn’t “vote no to vouchers” grammatically incorrect?

Kimberly Swygert of Number 2 Pencil, one of my blogchildren, is moving to The Education Wonks, where she’ll be guestblogging. Kimberly’s getting married and she’s too busy to maintain a solo blog. Well, I’m getting married too. She should be guestblogging for me!

Seriously, I’m glad Kimberly has found to combine having a life with blogging. And I’d be delighted to have her guestblog for me. Even though we’re taking our laptops on the honeymoon.

Must go. We’re meeting with the wedding ceremony performer and then with the caterer before going to Borders for the reading. Did I mention I have a cold and feel like a zombie? A zombie with a cold.

I’m signing copies of Our School today at 2 pm, I’ll be at Borders Books, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa. If you’re in the neighborhood, drop by to buy a book or two.

I’m looking for an independent book store in Washington, D.C. to handle sales at the May 11 reading at WEDJ Charter School for the Performing Arts, 705 Edgewood Street N.E. Washington, D.C.. Suggestions are welcome. I’m doing a “bookraiser” to get more books donated to the school library, so I really need a store that can bring a variety of children’s books.

Katie of Constrained Vision blogs on prank wars between CalTech, MIT and Harvey Mudd. Pranks (or hacks at MIT are less common these days, perhaps because video games and female students take up too much time and energy. But the recent theft of CalTech’s cannon by MIT students has renewed hope.

Chicago’s public students aren’t likely to earn a college degree.

Of every 100 freshmen entering a Chicago public high school, only about six will earn a bachelor’s degree by the time they’re in their mid-20s, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Thursday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

The prospects are even worse for African-American and Latino male freshmen, who only have about a 3 percent chance of obtaining a bachelor’s degree by the time they’re 25.

Of graduates in ’98 and ’99 who went on to four-year colleges, “35 percent earned a bachelor’s degree within six years, compared with 64 percent nationally,” reports the Chicago Tribune. Not surprisingly, students with better high school grades did better in college, but only 63 percent of the “A” students with a 3.6 grade average or higher completed a college degree in six years.

Perhaps more will earn a degree on the “10-year plan,” but these are dismal results.

If Condoleeza throws a watermelon off a tall building, how long will it take for the instructor who wrote the math-test question to apologize?

The Bellevue Community College math instructor who wrote a racially insensitive math question came forward during an emotional campus meeting Wednesday, apologizing for what he termed an “egregious mistake.”

“Though I never intended insult, I am judged for what I should have known. Educators are held to a higher standard,” said Peter Ratener, who has taught at BCC for more than 25 years.

The guy thought a watermelon joke would be OK if he mocked a black Republican? Blacks were not amused.

Asian-Americans will be the largest group of students in the new freshmen class at University of California.

Asians account for 36 percent of California residents admitted to study at UC schools, though they make up only 14 percent of seniors projected to graduate from the state’s public high schools.

By comparison, white students comprised 35.6 percent of those accepted; Latinos, 17.6 percent; African-Americans, 3.4 percent; and American Indians, 0.6 percent.

They work harder.

In Los Angeles, 80 percent of Asian-American students graduate from high school compared to 77 percent of whites, 55 percent of blacks and 44 percent of Hispanic students.

Today at 5:30 I’ll be at High Tech High, 2861 Womble Rd., San Diego to read and sign copies of Our School.

On Saturday, April 22 at 2 pm, I’ll be at Borders Books, South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa.