Dropout rate costs Missouri economy millions a year

High school dropouts are costing Missouri hundreds of millions of dollars in lost earnings and spending every year, according to a new study.

"Education and the Economy," released by the not-for-profit Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy organization, tracks the economic potential of bolstering graduation rates.

An estimated 20,000 students dropped out of Missouri's class of 2010, according to the report. The lost lifetime earnings in Missouri for that class of dropouts alone totals nearly $5.2 billion, based on figures from a previous study the organization conducted.

If Missouri could have cut that number of dropouts in half, the report says, those 10,000 graduates would likely earn as much as $106 million more in an average year compared to their earnings without a high school diploma.

The graduates also would:

* Spend an additional $80 million and invest an additional $26 million during an average year.

* Generate as much as $7.9 million in additional state tax revenue.

"The single greatest economic stimulus package for every state is a high school diploma, making sure students graduate from high school and go on to receive additional training after that," said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia.

Nancy Jernigan, executive director of United Way of Southeast Missouri, said the report's findings drive home the idea that improving graduation rates should be a concern of the entire community.

"It's hard to measure prevention, but I think we've got to put it in an economic perspective," she said. "It makes it more clear to them what the advantage is."

The United Way-sponsored Education Solutions Team recently released its "Mobilization Plan for Ensuring the Success of Our Children," complete with recommendations on how to boost Cape Girardeau School District's graduation rate to 90 percent by 2019. The rate in 2010 was 78.4 percent.

Students drop out for a variety of reasons. Behavioral problems, low achievement, habitual absenteeism and varied life events take a huge toll. But there is another category of dropout described as the "Fade Outs," students with decent grades and attendance who become bored, frustrated or disillusioned with school, believing they can make it in life without a high school diploma.

The goal of the Education Solutions Team is to find strategies to reach students at whatever point they are at-risk to fall off the graduation path. The school district last fall launched a tougher attendance policy to bolster a 94 percent attendance rate in 2009-2010. With an enrollment of 3,899 students in the district, that represents 234 children absent from school daily and missing more than 40,716 days of instruction combined, the United Way report said. Last year, more than 680 students missed 10 or more days of school. The new attendance policy, which holds parents legally accountable for their child's truancy, has cut into those numbers, school officials say, particularly at the elementary level.

Jernigan said this early intervention is critical in the graduation initiative.

The Alliance for Education report notes that 25 percent of high school students in Missouri do not graduate on time with a regular diploma, a higher figure than the 85 percent graduation rate reported by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Wise said the problem is in the ways states report graduation and dropout rates.

"One state used to have 22 ways not to call someone a dropout," he said. That problem is expected to be remedied this year when the uniform federal reporting standards take effect.

DESE officials could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon. Missouri's dropout rate was 4.2 percent in 2007, the latest information available at the department's website. That was considerably lower than the national average of 9.4 percent.

By the alliance's numbers, there were an estimated 1 million dropouts last year in the U.S. Raising the graduation rate is a battle that demands to be fought, Wise said.

"We want people to understand they have direct stake in this," he said. "This is about equity ... this is a matter of economic security for the country."

mkittle@semissourian.com

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