Horrifying School Statistics in the US

by Moyra Deigado
(New Mexico)

Heard the latest bleak schooling stats? Over seven thousand students drop out every school day in the United States! Fifty of our largest cities fail to graduate fifty percent of all high school students every year.

Do you often wonder what their life will be like as adults? And another terrifying statistic, every day there are 23 of every 100 black males age 16 to 20 who have abandoned school are in prison or a juvenile correction facility.

Compare that with six or seven in 100 young Asian, Hispanic and white students who have dropped out, according to a new Center for Labor Market Studies report.

Prison, early parenting, low-wage jobs - the lifelong costs to young people are severe, and the cost to our families and the country as a whole.

With people getting laid off and the job market tightening, people need every advantage possible to get ahead. The most important key is getting a good education, with a high school diploma being a necessity.

In a June publication of Alliance for Excellent Education, a study noted that approximately 1.2 million students drop out of school each year. Without the much-needed high school diploma, "these individuals will be far more likely than graduates to spend their lives periodically unemployed, on government assistance or cycling in and out of the prison system," it reported.

That same study reported that if the dropouts who were to graduate with the class of 2008 would have stayed in school, "the nation's economy would have benefited from an additional $319 billion in income over their lifetimes."

Survey by JENNY DERRINGER