Kids are Dropping Out of School at an Alarming Rate!

DID YOU KNOW:

• Nationally, More than 7,000 students become dropouts every school day in America, adding up to over 1.3 million students annually who will not graduate from high school with their peers

• Years of research repeatedly highlight the link between education and the economy. Raising educational outcomes not only boosts incomes for individuals who earn degrees, but these individual gains also compound to improve local, state and national economies.

• Investing in turning dropouts into graduates will benefit all citizens, not simply students or parents with children in school.

THE BEST ECONOMIC STIMULUS IS A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA     

• If just half of the students that dropped out of school last year graduated with their peers:

• They would have earned an additional $7.6 billion (1)

• By the midpoint of their careers, these graduates combined would likely purchase homes totaling in value as much as $19 billion more than what they would have spent without a diploma (1)

• They would spend up to an additional $741 million in vehicle purchases in a given year. (1)

• As a result of the additional spending, state tax revenues would likely grow as much as $713 million during an average year. (1)

HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS OFTEN TURN TO CRIME

• 85% of prison inmates are high school dropouts and a very high proportion of them are functionally illiterate. (2)
• The US spends on an average $36,786 per year per inmate or $84.5 billion annually incarcerating 2.3 million inmates. (3)
• If the male graduation rate were increased by only 5% the nation would see an annual savings of $4.9 billion in crime-related costs. (2)
• More African American men without high school diplomas or GEDs  are behind bars (37%) than are employed (26%) (3)
  
  

CHILDREN WHO DO NOT READ WELL BY 3^RD GRADE ARE MORE LIKELY TO DROPOUT!

• One in Six children who are not reading proficiently by the third grade do not graduate from high school on time, a rate four times greater than that of proficient young readers. (4)
• Graduation rates for African American and Hispanic students who were not proficient readers in the third grade lagged far behind those for other students with the same reading skills. (4)
• Poverty is an accelerating factor due to the fact that children living in poverty have little to no access to books in the homes; In fact the books to kids ratio in low income communities is 1 age-appropriate book for every 300 children. (4)

(1)   Alliance for Educational Excellence: Education and the Economy

(2)   Coalition for Juvenile Justice-Adolescent Literacy: A National Crisis, 2009

(3)   PEW Charitable Trust Report, 2009

(4)   Double Jeopardy: The Annie E. Casey Foundation. 2011