high school dropouts

A total of 3,030,000 students drop out of high school annually in the United States, thirty six percent of whom drop out in the ninth grade (SB). With each student that drops out, there must also be the thought of said student’s future and how he or she will affect the futures of others. The overwhelming amount of teenagers leaving school will have long term effects on the economy. Assuming a student who has dropped out of school is not going to pursue getting a GED (General Education Development), then according to drop out rates that student “will not be eligible for ninety percent of jobs currently offered in the United States” (SB). By not earning a degree, a dropout cannot make the same amount as a college graduate or even someone who has achieved a diploma. Without being able to get a stable job to support a daily life, people turn to the government for help which in turn cost the public billions of dollars every year. Claudio Sanchez from the National public Radio defined taxpayer’s losses to be “up to 350 billion a year in lost wages, taxable income, health, welfare, and incarceration costs among others” (Zhao). With the public’s loss of money there is no telling how much of what is going where. The money going towards supporting dropouts is a large miss use, seeing as dropouts could have potentially continued school. Students ending education early on and relying on government support will continue to take the economy into an unstable downturn.

An area where not only does the government lose money, but dropouts as well is when states record the number of dropouts from schools. Reporting dropout rates is a major issue in states such as California, Texas and Illinois. The numbers of dropouts decreasing does not match up...

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... and government programs to support themselves. Those who turn out not to be law abiding citizens and end up in jail adding to taxpayers losses just goes to show that it would be in the country’s best interest to find ways of helping struggling students. Developing school curriculums specifically for assisting students is a fantastic way to prevent dropouts. The more a student focuses on studying or getting the needed extra help is a step closer to getting a diploma, and without a diploma the majority of jobs in America are unavailable for dropouts to even apply. Unless there is a personal problem there should be no reason a student cannot complete school. Even with home issues there are ways to rise above the problem and still succeed. Unless the government takes action towards education reform in the nation, many more dropouts will continue to burden the economy.