Achievement in African-American inner city schools falls far behind suburban schools and middle-class communities. The dropout rates for African-American youth is higher, standardized test scores lower, and attendance poorer. A Chicago Sun-Times article (October 20, 1988:4) indicated that the participating high schools had between 31.5% and 55.5% of their students finishing high school within 4 years. Kunjufu, in his discussion of the conspiracy to destroy black boys, draws a direct correlation between age, school achievement, and "street time."12 Street time was measured as the number of unsupervised hours youths spend in activities outside of the home, school, or community organizations. The older black
boys became more disinterested or uninvolved in academic pursuits, resulting in lower achievement test scores as they got older. Street time and poor achievement tend to exacerbate the problems of delinquency and truancy, which influences students to dropout, thus having more"street time." Research conducted by Eth and Pynoos on psychic trauma in childhood identifies "deleterious effects on cognition, memory, school performance and learning."2 These problems are identified as possible results of co-victimization in childhood. It is possible that the measures of violence and co-victimization in youth are not just measures of violence, but also may correlate with poor school performance and learning, which are symptoms of psychic trauma in youth.