Increasing Graduation Rates
Learning To Finish
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In the United States, every 26 seconds a student drops out of high school. Our country faces a silent epidemic – year after year – where nearly one-third of all 9th grade students and half of low-income and minority 9th graders in the public school system fail to graduate in four years.
And the problem is not shrinking. The Education Trust notes: “The United States is the only industrialized country in the world in which today’s young people are less likely than their parents to have completed high school.”
At the National Summit on America’s Silent Epidemic, Robert Balfanz wrote:
“Decades ago, this would not have been a crisis. Manufacturing and agricultural jobs provided an avenue for employment and upward mobility for young adults without a high school degree. Today, the unemployment rate for young adults without a high school diploma is staggering. As a result, failure to graduate from high school has become a ticket to the underclass. For a single individual this can be tragic, but when the majority or near majority of students from entire neighborhoods and communities fail to graduate, the social and economic costs are profound and far reaching.”
As if these national statistics are not enough to cause concern, the problem is even more pronounced in Louisiana. In the 2008 periodical “High School Counts,” published by the Louisiana Department of Education, the following summary puts the dropout issue in context.
“Every year 15,000 students drop out of Louisiana public schools; more than one in three of our students do not graduate from high school. These individuals leave school unprepared to earn a living wage and are unable to contribute to the economy of the state. High School dropouts of Louisiana’s class of 2006 alone will cost the state $6.5 billion dollars in lost wages over their lifetime. Dropouts contribute heavily to Louisiana’s burgeoning prison population, high welfare costs, and critical shortage of skilled workers. Our state can no longer afford the high costs of students dropping out.”
Research helps define the problem – who the dropouts are and how to prevent it. While there is no magic bullet or quick fix to the dropout crisis, Louisiana is committed to progress with a combination of hard work and good policy decisions.
A key component of Louisiana’s approach to increasing graduation rates is that whole communities must be engaged. Whatever the issue – economic development, workforce development, reducing the crime rate, reducing welfare costs, expanding the middle class, or reducing poverty – increasing the graduation rate is a means to achieving the goals of Louisiana.
