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Silent Crisis: Large Numbers of Youth Are Not Completing High School
Today's high schools are not graduating all students -- with the skills
they need for today's economy.
According to Diplomas Count, a June 2006 Education Week report, 30 percent of 9th graders fail to finish high school with their peers—an estimated 1.2 million U.S. students from the class of 2006, and most of them are members of minority groups. http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2006/06/22/index.html?levelId=2300 In "One-Third of a Nation: Rising Dropout Rates and Declining Opportunities," the Education Testing Service's Policy Information Center finds that the nation's high dropout rates are rising in all but seven states and that more students are dropping out between ninth and tenth grades. The report identifies key factors accounting for the wide range of completion rates among the states and documents a steep decline in federal investment in second-chance programs, from about $15 billion in the late 1970s to about $3 billion today.http://www.ets.org/Media/Education_Topics/pdf/onethird.pdf Nationally, about 68 percent of students who enter 9th grade will graduate in four years—but rates in southern states are much lower, according to a new study by the Civil Rights Project. In this region the graduation rates for minority youth and all youth in poverty rarely exceed 50 percent. A recent Communities in Schools survey finds that only one in ten Americans believe the high school dropout problem is a crisis. Most associate high school dropouts with economic and social problems but underestimate how many dropouts there are and underestimate the percentage of young prison inmates who failed to complete high school. It is estimated that there are 3.8 million youth between the ages of 18 and
24 who are neither employed nor in school—roughly 15 percent of all young
adults. Since 2000 alone, the ranks of these non-engaged young adults grew
by 700,000, a 19 percent increase over 3 years. (Kids Count Data Book, Annie
E. Casey Foundation, 2004) Nationwide the overall graduation rate for the class of 2001 was 68 percent,
with nearly one-third of all public high school students failing to graduate.
(Who Graduates? Who Doesn't?, Urban Institute, 2004) Only half of the nation's minority students graduate from high school along
with their peers. For many groups-Latino, black, or Native American males-graduation
rates are even lower. As states hasten to institute higher standards and high-stakes
tests in the effort to raise student achievement, this situation is likely
to worsen, particularly among minority students. Yet this educational and civil
rights crisis remains largely hidden from public view. Between seventy-five and eighty percent of the four million current 14 year
olds will graduate high school with a regular degree. Approximately twenty-eight Event dropout rates represent the percentage of students who drop out of high
school each year. During the 1970s and 1980s, event dropout rates improved,
but rates remained unchanged for all income groups during the 1990s. During
the 12 months ending in October 2001, high school students from low-income
families (the lowest 20 percent) dropped out of school at six times the rate
of their peers from high-income families. About 11 percent of students from
low-income families dropped out of high school, whereas 5 percent of middle-income
students and 2 percent of high-income students did so. (The Condition of Education
2004 in Brief, Indicator 10, p. 11) The national graduation rate for the class of 1998 was 71%. For white students
the rate was 78%, while it was 56% for African-American students and 54% for
Latino students. (Jay P. Greene, High School Graduate Rates in the United States,
Manhattan Institute, Black Alliance for Educational Opportunities, April, 2002) To keep the economy strong and competitive, America needs every high school
student to graduate with skills needed for work or higher learning. More than 1.2 million students didn't graduate from U.S. high schools in 2004, costing the nation more than $325 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity. The Alliance for Excellent Education has a state by state chart showing the losses over a lifetime to each state and the District of Columbia. Between 1997 and 2001, more than a quarter of all dropouts were unemployed
for a year or longer, compared with only 11 percent of those with a high school
diploma or GED. Youth who drop out of high school are at very high risk of long-term disconnection,
including those who later get a GED. While the majority of high school dropouts
do manage to eventually connect with the labor force, the great majority experience
long periods of unemployment. One study that followed a large group of high
school aged youth from 1979 until 1992 found that eighty percent of all those
without a high school diploma were unemployed for at least a full year; half
were disconnected from the labor force for 3 or more years between their 18th
and 25th birthdays. More recently, in 2000, a time of very low unemployment,
only slightly over half of all dropouts were employed at any given time. (Wald,
M and T. Martinez, "Connected by 25: Improving the Life Chances of the
Country's Most Vulnerable 14-24 Year-Olds," 2003) In this decade, the number of 20-24 year olds searching for jobs and training
opportunities will increase by 21 percent, and the skill levels required for
those jobs will be higher than in the past. (American Youth Policy Forum, 2001) At a time when our country's economic growth is more dependent than
ever on an educated and skilled workforce, the largest projected population
increases are among the demographic groups with the greatest percentages of
vulnerable youth (Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, Access
Denied: Restoring the Nation's Commitment to Equal Educational Opportunity). Increasing minority students' participation in college to the same percentage
as that of white students would create an additional $231 billion in GDP. (Anthony
P. Carnevale and Richard A. Fry, Crossing the Great Divide, 2000). It costs Michigan employers $330 million to $1.15 billion annually to correct
the shortcomings of workers who leave high school without basic skills. (Greene,
The Cost of Remedial Education, 2000) Six million students throughout America are currently at risk of dropping
out of school. High school dropouts are unable to enter the workforce with
the necessary skills to meet the demands of the nation's global economy.
American business currently spends more than $60 billion each year on training,
much of that on remedial reading, writing, and mathematics. (Alliance for Excellent
Education factsheet) Students who don't complete high school today face enormous
odds in the workforce. In 1973, 36 percent of Americans in skilled blue-collar and related fields
had not finished high school, while just 17 percent had some college or a degree.
B y 1998, only 11 percent of Americans in skilled blue collar and related careers
had not finished high school, while 48 percent of such workers had some college
or a degree. (Carnevale 2001, as quoted by Alliance for Excellent Education). Nine out of ten of the 11,000 youth in adult detention facilities have, at
best, a ninth-grade education (Coalition for Juvenile Justice, 2001, From the
Prison Track to the College Track). During 2001, only 55% of young adult dropouts were employed as opposed to
74% of high school graduates, 81% of those completing some college and 87%
of four-year college graduates (Andrew Sum et al, Left Behind in the Labor
Market, 2002) Of the estimated 5.5 million disconnected youngsters [not working and not
in school] in 2001, 43 percent were dropouts. (Andrew Sum et al, Left Behind
in the Labor Market, 2002). Some education reforms encourage schools to push struggling students out instead
of keeping them enrolled. The emphasis on standards and accountability, high school exit exams, and
other reforms has brought some unintended consequences—incentives that
discourages schools from doing what it takes to keep low-performing teens enrolled
and few incentives to track or re-engage students when they drop out. (Losing
Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate
Crisis, Urban Institute and Harvard Civil Rights Project, 2004) A uniform standard for measuring graduation and drop-out rates will help schools
and communities measure their progress and their challenges. Since the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) became federal law in January 2002,
high school graduation rates have gained an increasingly important place in
educational policy circles. The federal law for the first time requires that
high schools and school systems be held accountable in a meaningful way for
graduation rates as well as performance on academic assessments. This important
step in the evolution of federal accountability has generated a considerable
amount of debate over a variety of issues including: the state of the nation
with regard to this key measure of educational fitness; graduation levels among
particular student subgroups (such as historically disadvantaged minorities);
the ways in which states are implementing graduation rate accountability required
under the law; and even the best methods for measuring graduation rates. (Who
Graduates? Who Doesn't?, Urban Institute, 2004) Accurate, reliable information about how many of the nation's children are
not completing high school—and who these children are—is critical. Without
it, policymakers and school administrators are unable to effectively assess
school quality, determine school progress, and propose reforms to improve outcomes. It would seem to be a simple question of either having a diploma or not, but
educators, researchers and policymakers throughout the country have long debated
the exact definition of a dropout and exactly how dropouts should be counted.
Some use enrollment figures to reach their conclusions, while others rely on
population surveys from the U.S. Census. Some include GED recipients in their
high school completion rates; others do not. Some account for the large influx
of immigrants into public schools, and some do not. Some keep close tabs on
transfer students; many do not. (Lucy Hood, High School Students at Risk: the
Challenge of Dropouts and Pushouts, Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2004) The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) finds a national high
school completion rate of 86% for the class of 1998. The discrepancy between
the NCES finding and this report's finding of a 71% rate is largely
caused by NCES' counting of General Educational Development (GED) graduates
and others with alternative credentials as high school graduates, and by its
reliance on a methodology that is likely to undercount dropouts. ( Jay P. Greene,
High School Graduate Rates in the United States, Manhattan Institute) The GAO Says DOE Could Do More on Accounting for Graduation Rates Whatever It Takes |
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