Published: April 21, 2008 03:04 pm            

The real cost — 04/22/08

The entire state loses when teenager drops out of school

Believe it or not, high school dropout rates are among the most difficult numbers to accurately determine. That’s because the rates annually reported by individual schools and school districts show only a small percentage of students quitting school. But one gets a much different picture when comparisons are made in the number of students in a high school’s freshman class and the number of graduating seniors four years later. Those numbers show that as many as 30 percent of the students in a freshman class fail to complete high school.

A 2006 report by the Southern Regional Education Board found that a higher percentage of Kentucky teenagers are dropping out of school than their counterparts in other states, and the numbers are even more alarming when broken down by race and gender.

For example, in 2003, 83 percent of the white females and 76 of white males graduated from high school in the U.S. However, in Kentucky, the graduation rates for white females was a dismal 69 percent and an even lower 63 percent for white males.

A higher percentage of black males and female and Hispanic males did graduate in Kentucky than the national average, but the numbers in both Kentucky and the nation as a whole were dismal. Nationwide, the SREB reports that only 45 percent of black males and 50 percent of Hispanic males completed high school in 2003. In Kentucky, the graduation rate was 56 percent for black males and 62 percent for Hispanic males. Kentucky also reported that almost two out of every three black females (65 percent) completed high school, compared to the national average of 59 percent.

But those are just faceless numbers. Other statistics show that those lacking at least a high school degree are destined to spend their lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Today’s economy demands more and more college graduates; those without high school degrees simply cannot qualify for most jobs.

And that impacts not just the economic stability of the dropouts but also the economy of an entire state and region.

In fact, according to an estimate by the Alliance for Excellent Education — a privately funded education advocacy organization headed by former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise — the more than 16,000 dropouts from the class of 2007 in Kentucky cost the federal government some $788.1 million in additional tax revenue.

Nationwide, Wise adds that “had all of the dropouts from the class of 2007 received their high school diplomas, they could have contributed enough money in additional tax revenue over the course of their lifetimes to match the amount of discretionary funding that the U.S. Department of Education received for an entire year. If that isn’t the best example of how education pays for itself, I don’t know what is.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average annual income for a high school dropout in 2005 was almost $10,000 less than for a high school graduate. In a single year the average high school dropout pays $1,302 in federal income taxes compared to $3,085 for a high school graduate.

The message is clear: When young people drop out of high school, it not only negatively impacts their economic status for the rest of their lives, it affects us all. Nowhere else is that more evident than in this region where a poorly educated adult population is a major obstacle to economic development.

        

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