Too Important to Fail

Too Important to Fail
Saving America's Boys

Tavis Smiley Reports Too Important to Fail: Saving America's Boys is the companion volume to the TAVIS SMILEY REPORTS PBS special sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of its American Graduate: Let's Make It Happen initiative. It examines an undeclared crisis in America-the staggering dropout rate among young black males. In countless urban schools the graduation rate has plummeted to less than 20% and nationwide fewer than 50% of young black males will graduate from high school. Low graduation rates combined with disproportionate rates of suspensions, expulsion, and young black males assigned to special education classes, fuel this state of emergency. Tavis Smiley's candid conversations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Oakland with frontline experts and educators, detention center administrators, and the boys themselves urges viewers to ponder the societal and economic cost of losing another generation of uneducated young black males to lifetimes of prison and poverty. This volume picks up where the special leaves off with expanded discussion, dot-connecting data and real life examples of the information and resources needed to harness our frustration and concern into collective and effective action. Too Important to Fail includes an extensive resource guide that lists 130 organizations who are committed to solving this monumental challenge.