The Greater Louisville Project has just released a special report that digs deeper into the issues of education attainment in Louisville Metro.
This report was prepared in response to a request at the West Louisville Forum last summer, when an audience member asked about differences in education attainment between the African-American and white communities. When we looked at the data, the disparities were so striking that a special report seemed in order.
Data from the 2005-2007 American Community Surveys showed that only 13% of African-Americans in Louisville Metro held a Bachelor's Degree or higher -- the smallest percentage among any of Louisville's peer cities. The same data showed that 30% of whites held a postsecondary degree at that time.
Further, the rate of improvement among African Americans over the last two decades has been very slow, moving from 9% in 1990 to an average of 13% in the ACS data. That's the same period when the college-attainment rate among white residents moved from 21% to 30%.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing in the blog about different aspects of the special report, a copy of which can be found on this website. Take a look -- the data spells out a major challenge for raising education attainment in Louisville Metro and for its ambition to move into the top tier of American cities.