A recent report on the economic drag of high school dropouts finds that annual lost wages in D.C., Maryland and Virginia could amount to nearly $14 billion.
Nationwide, nearly $320 billion could be lost annually from the 30 percent of students who fail to earn a diploma, according to the report by D.C.-based Alliance for Excellent Education, an organization focused on improving American high schools.
“I understand the attention on Wall Street,” said Alliance President Bob Wise, “but the economic cost of dropouts will make today’s bailout look like small change.”
Wise added that the necessity of a high school diploma increases every year, as “90 percent of the fastest growing high-wage jobs require post-secondary education, and 60 percent of current jobs do.”
The Alliance used statistics gathered from federal agencies and published studies to report a lifetime average per dropout of $260,000 in lost earnings and taxable dollars. The $320 billion figure comes from multiplying that figure from the estimated 1.2 million high school dropouts in 2008.
D.C. let loose about 2,000 dropouts; In Maryland, there were about 21,500, and in Virginia, 29,000, according to the report.
In addition, it found that each graduate saves states an average of nearly $14,000 over a lifetime for Medicaid and health care for uninsured residents.
Keeping students on track to graduation is a daily task for Jan Goldstein, director of Montgomery County’s Arts on the Block, an arts-based job training program for students from four of the county’s most troubled high schools.
“In my experience, the kids we work with don’t have access to, or knowledge of, guidance and career counselors,” Goldstein said, adding that after-school programs are often the best place for them to explore career paths and find mentors.
“The biggest takeaway is to recognize that everyone in the community has a stake in their high school,” said Wise, the former governor of West Virginia. “There may be a high school several miles away that I don’t drive past every day, but it has a direct impact on my quality of life.”
