Answers to Research Questions for Description Section of Dropout Position Paper

9A Exposition 18B Answers to Research Questions for Description Section of Dropout Position Paper

I. Gripping Anecdote about an Actual Dropout (you know or read/heard about) – should be a paragraph long II. The Number of High School Dropouts There Are in: a. The United States: 7,200 per day/1.3 million per year (Beast); only 68.8 % graduate on time (in four years) (Beast) a.i. and how we compare to other countries (the following countries belong to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and include some of the wealthiest countries in the world) 2003 on-time graduation rates (the percentage of students who graduated within 4 years): Denmark 96% Japan 93% Poland 92% Germany 92% Finland 91% Switzerland 88% Czech Republic 85% France 85% OECD Average 82% Belgium 79% Ireland 76% Slovakia 73% United States 72% Sweden 71% Iceland 70% (OECD); In 2010, U.S. ranked 18th in high school graduation rates among developed countries (nea) b. CA: 1 out of every four students drops out 4 (The rate is 1 in every 3 students in Los Angeles) (LA Times); b.i. and how we compare to other states CA ranks 41st (Education Week cited in California’s Children); CA’s grad rate is decreasing while rest of nation is slowly increasing (Education Week cited in California’s Children); 36 states have improved in last 10 years – NY and Tennessee had double-digit gains (edweek) c. LAUSD: what our on-time graduation rate is depends on who you ask: outside education experts say 40.6% in 2010 (Beast); LAUSD’s Superintendent says 56% in 20100-11 (LAUSD Superintendent) c.i. and how we compare to other districts 2nd worst in US (Education Week); also below state average (californiaschildren); LAUSD produces 40,000 dropouts each year; LAUSD’S student population is only half of New York City’s, but LAUSD’s grad rate is 14% lower (edweek) d. SFHS 55% in 2010-11 (LAUSD) III. How these numbers have fared over time: California’s 2010 rate of 62.7% is almost 10 % lower than 2002’s 71.3% rate (californiaschildren); according to outside experts, the true high school graduation rate is substantially lower than the official rate issued by the National Center for Educational Statistics and it has been declining over the past 40 years (Heckman) people within the school system say nationwide, there has been a 3% increase in grad rate from 65.7% in ’97 to 68.8% in 2007 (edweek); ) IV. Demographic Breakdown a. ethnicity more than ½ are low-income minority students; In many states the difference between white and minority graduation rates is stunning; in several cases there is a gap of as many as 40 or 50 percentage points.(all4ed) a.i. Asian on-time graduation rate 89.6 % in ’06 (nea) a.ii. non-Hispanic white on-time graduation rate: 81% (June 2, 2010 New York Times “Graduation Rates, by State and Race” by Catherine Rampell) a.iii. African American on-time graduation rate 54% in ’07 (edweek); Hispanic on-time graduation rate 56% in ’07 (edweek); a.iv. Native American on-time graduation rate 51% in ’07 (edweek) b. gender Minority Males Are More Likely To Drop Out. For example, only 48 percent of Black males in the class of 2004 graduated compared to 59 percent of Black females. Similarly, 49 percent of Latino males, but 58 percent of Latino female students, graduated. (nea); only 40% of teen mothers graduate from high school (Covenant House) c. socioeconomic status A sixteen- to twenty-four-year-old coming from the highest quartile of family income is about seven times as likely to have completed high school as a sixteen- to twenty-four-year-old coming from the lowest quartile (all4ed) d. population density 2003-04: roughly ½ of students in 50 biggest school districts in US completed in 4 years (nea); nationwide, 58% of urban students graduate vs 75% of suburban kids (nea); 2000 urban schools – sometimes called “dropout factories” - produce 50% of nation’s dropouts year after year (nea)

A relatively small number of chronically underperforming high schools are responsible for more than half of the nation‘s dropouts. Approximately two thousand high schools (about 12 percent of American high schools) produce more than half of the nation‘s dropouts. Eighty percent of the high schools that produce the most dropouts can be found in a subset of just fifteen states. Dropout factories produce 69 percent of all African American dropouts and 63 percent of all Hispanic dropouts, compared to 30 percent of all white dropouts. (all4ed)

V. The Consequences of Dropping Out for the Individual (where the “so what?” question gets answered) a. higher unemployment a.i. percentage of the unemployed who are dropouts (see Education Pays chart below (bls.gov)) a.ii. comparison of unemployment rates per level of education (see Education Pays chart below (bls.gov)) b. less income: comparison of projected earnings for dropouts, hs grads, college grads, professional degree holders, etc (see Education Pays chart below (bls.gov) Over the course of his or her lifetime, a high school dropout earns, on average, about $260,000 less than a high school graduate. (all4ed) The real wages of high school dropouts have declined since the early 1970s while those of more skilled workers have risen sharply (Heckman)

c. significance of not being able to get a good job (besides low pay and higher unemployment) c.i. harder to buy house, car, etc c.i.1. how much it costs to live comfortably in Los Angeles: $80,000.00 according to californiarealitycheck.com (accessed through LAUSD’s Digital Library) c.i.2. percentage of the homeless who are dropouts: 38% (Covenant House) c.ii. less likely to get a job that provides health care benefits: Dropouts are half as likely to have jobs that provide pension plans or health insurance (Planty) “health care will cost the typical household roughly $15,000 this year.” (NYT July 21, 2009); dropouts ages 25 or older reported being in worse health than adults who are not dropouts, regardless of income (Pleis, Lucas, and Ward 2009). Compared to high school graduates, dropouts are more likely to suffer from illness or disability and to die prematurely from cardiovascular disease, cancer, infection, injury, and diabetes.(nea) c.iii. greater temptation to commit crime? c.iii.1. percentage of prisoners who are dropouts: Dropouts also make up disproportionately higher percentages of the nation’s prison and death row inmates.3Among the prison population, 78 percent are uncertified high school dropouts or GED recipients (Heckman) c.iv. more likely to functionally illiterate/innumerate c.iv.1. illiteracy/innumeracy defined: read and write/possess math skills at or below the 5th grade level c.iv.2. challenges faced by functional illiterates VI. The Consequences of dropping out for society – economic: a. the average high school dropout is associated with costs to the economy of approximately $240,000 over his or her lifetime in terms of lower tax contributions, higher reliance on Medicaid and Medicare, higher rates of criminal activity, and higher reliance on welfare (Levin and Belfield 2007).4 b. the cost of administering federal, state, and municipal penal systems (housing prisoners in particular): Increasing the high school completion rate of men ages 20–60 by one percent would save the U.S. as much as $1.4 billion per year in criminal justice costs (nea); California spends $50,000 per year per inmate, compared to around $8,000 per year per K-12 student (baycitizen.org) c. of providing unemployment and welfare benefits: High school dropouts are more likely to be on some form of public assistance. For example, single mothers who lack a high school diploma are very likely to access housing assistance, food stamps, and/or federal assistance to needy families. If all single mothers obtained at least a high school education, the annual cost savings would be $3.8 billion. (nea) d. of providing health care to the poor Conservatively, each and every year’s worth of high school dropouts (based on 600,000 students) represents $23 billion in public health costs (nea) Dropouts also are disproportionately represented among Medicaid recipients. More than one quarter of uninsured Americans are high school dropouts; Only eight percent of high school graduates (and only 1% of college graduates) enroll in Medicaid; 25 percent of dropouts do so. Dropouts also enroll in Medicare (due to disability) at twice the rate of high school graduates. (nea) e. lost wages Dropouts from the Class of 2008 alone will cost the nation more than $319 billion in lost wages over the course of their lifetimes.14 (all4ed) f. lost opportunities to purchase things society (especially students) really wants: f.i. skate park, free concerts, more field trips, sports team uniforms g. our taxes might be a lot lower if we didn’t have such high social costs h. relationship between state and nation’s economic growth and high drop out rates h.i. unemployment would be lower if there were more highly trained job applicants: Eric Spiegel, U.S. regional President and CEO of German engineering conglomerate Siemens, recently told the Financial Times that much of America's employment problem isn't because of a lack of jobs, but because there are too few qualified workers. Currently, Siemens, whose 15 divisions in industry, energy and healthcare employed around 405,000 U.S. workers last year, has around 3,200 job vacancies, and Spiegel says that filling them has been no easy task. Even with 13.9 million Americans currently unemployed, the high unemployment rate has not given companies an endless number of candidates. In the manufacturing sector, for example, the number of those employed has gone down but the number of jobs available has risen to 230,000 today from 98,000 in 2008. By the same token, a recent study by the employment agency Manpower finds that 52 percent of American companies said they are experiencing difficulty finding employees qualified enough to fill mission-critical positions, compared to only 14 percent in 2010. (Financial Times) h.ii. how well US economy has been doing relative to other nations (especially those with lower drop-out rates): % of economic growth in 2010: China: 10.3; India: 10.2; Brazil: 7.5; S. Korea: 6.1; Sweden: 5.5; Mexico: 5.5; Russia: 4; Japan: 4; Germany: 3.5; US: 2.83 (International Monetary Fund)

VII. The Consequences of dropping out for society: political a. democracy depends upon an informed electorate If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Yancey, 1816 Thomas Jefferson prescribed “two great measures,… without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county … [so] that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it" (Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810, in (Jefferson 1903-04), v. 12, p. 393). Benjamin Franklin agreed: “Nothing can more effectually contribute to the Cultivation and Improvement of a Country, the Wisdom, Riches, and Strength, Virtue and Piety, the Welfare and Happiness of a People, than a proper Education of youth” (Franklin 1962 [1749]: 152- 153). Dropouts Are Less Likely To Vote or Engage in Civic Activities. In 2004, college graduates were nearly three times more likely to vote than Americans without a high school degree, replicating a longstanding pattern of political participation directly proportional to educational attainment. Americans with the least education are the least likely to be engaged in civic participation—voting, community involvement, volunteering, charitable work, etc. (nea) illiterate/less educated people less likely able to cast an intelligent vote?

VIII. Problem’s not going to just disappear a. children of dropouts are more likely to drop out themselves: The parents' education level is strongly correlated with a student's own academic achievement. (2006 report, Civic Enterprises)