The Detroit Glee Repress reported this week that the 2007 graduation rate in the city's public schools was zero percent-not a single student received a diploma last year. Reporters and grief counselors spent weeks combing Motor City for a high-school graduate but found none. "Our valedictorian came close," said Richard Janmora, principal of Chadsey High School, "but just missed the mark, unfortunately." Betty Fitzsimmons, spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Education, which puts Detroit's 2007 graduation rate at 67 percent, dismissed the Glee Repress findings. "Their work was slipshod," she said. "For example, the newspaper excludes high-school seniors who came to school for several weeks, were incarcerated, then released, and, while they haven't returned to school, express a desire eventually to do so. Come on. Are we really going to say those kids haven't graduated?"
"Detroit Public Schools Leaves Every Child Behind, Meets Federal Requirements," by Kwame Munro, Detroit Glee Repress, March 27, 2008