The Economic Benefits of Reducing the Dropout Rate Among Students of Color in the Nation’s Largest Metropolitan Areas

Eliminating half of Louisville's 1050 dropouts

from the Class of 2008

Would have increased earnings $5.6 million

Spending & Investment $5.4 million

Home & Auto sales $11 million

This from the Alliance for Excellent Education:

Years of data have consistently underscored the persistent graduation gap between America’s students of color and their peers. The most recent estimate shows that high school graduation rates for African American, Latino, and American Indian students hover only slightly higher than 50 percent. This is more than 20 percentage points lower than that of their white peers.

In addition to the moral imperative to provide every student with an equal opportunity to pursue the American dream, there is also a strong economic argument for helping more students of color graduate from high school. Lowering the dropout rate brings a range of benefits to a community, many of which most people do not realize. Graduating more students from high school can have a profound impact on increased earnings potential, home and auto sales, and other important economic indicators for communities and states.

Earlier in 2010, the Alliance for Excellent Education documented the benefits of reducing the dropout rate for all students in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. Building on this work, the Alliance is now able to estimate the economic benefits of reducing the dropout rate among students of color in these metro areas. These findings were developed in partnership with Economic Modeling Specialists Inc., an Idaho-based economic firm specializing in socioeconomic impact tools, and with the generous support of State Farm®.

To see how cutting the dropout rate in half in students of color subgroups in the nation’s fifty largest cities—and the metropolitan areas that surround them—would benefit the nation’s economy as a whole, read the aggregate analysis.

Check out the data for Louisville here.

Hat tip to the Commish

Olympic Goals for Education

On February 12, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia, kicked off the Alliance's coverage of the Winter Olympics. In his first video, Gov. Wise discusses the other international competition that American students engage in every single day and reminds viewers that improvements in education lead to a better economy.



In his second report from the 2010 Winter Olympics, Bob Wise observes that speed skaters and students have something in common -- the need for public support. He also talks about how the U.S. has fallen behind its international counterparts in high school and college graduation rates.

A New Concensus to Improve Schools?

Two sets of prominent educators and policy leaders released statements last June emphasizing different answers to the fundamental question facing school reform in America:

Should schools be held primarily responsible for improving student achievement, or do they need help from health and social programs to ensure their students’ success?

The first group in a statement titled “A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education,” asserted that schools can’t do it alone. “We need to work on these other fronts as well,” said Helen F. Ladd, a professor of public-policy studies and economics at Duke University and one of the three co-chairs of the group, referring to the call for better health services for children and high-quality preschool, after-school, and summer programs.

The group, whose stetement was signed by Richard Day of KSN&C, is made up primarily of researchers and former federal officials, and is trying to focus debates on the difficulty schools have raising achievement if students don’t have access to health care, early education, and other services.

A day later, a second group launched.

The Education Equality Project, formally launched New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist, argues that “public education today remains mired in the status quo” and “shows little prospect of meaningful improvement” without significant changes in the ways schools are structured, its statement said.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is the only person I'm aware of who signed on with both groups. And now an effort is being made to bring the two groups together.

Politics K-12 is reporting that a new concensus may be emerging.

At a two-day summit in Washington, a group of 14 education policy leaders, including Linda Darling-Hammond, the NEA’s John I. Wilson, and two former governors, pieced together a set of six recommendations to President Obama.

1. Assure Readiness: Success in the classroom requires that children arrive ready to learn – cognitively, physically, and psychologically.
2. Provide Rich Learning Environments for All Students: All young people in America deserve rich learning environments that challenge their thinking, promote learning by doing and focus on higher-order thinking skills that encourage life-long learning and prepare young people to be engaged, collaborative citizens.
3. Improve Overall Standards, Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment: Standards should be more common, more rigorous, and benchmarked against the top international standards. Curriculum, instruction, and assessment must be aligned with each other and with those international benchmarked standards.
4. Improve Overall Teacher Quality: Policies and systems must be in place to promote best practices in teaching, reward high performers, and provide opportunities for feedback and development for those in need of improvement.
5. Ensure the Development of 21st Century School Leaders: School leadership should be focused on a combination of student learning, progress, and culture-building, while enhancing the quality of teaching.
6. Generate and Use Research Effectively: Ensure the use of existing research and advance new research topics that address issues specific to 21st Century challenges.

The consensus paper doesn't wade very far into the thornier issues facing K-12, such as how to get rid of ineffective teachers, or what common standards would look like. The group also debated, and decided against, using the words "charter schools" in the consensus document.

Former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, now leads the Alliance for Excellent Education. Other members include:
--Former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, chairman, Strong American Schools
--Felicia Y. Blasingame, president/CEO of South Central Community Services, Inc.
--Alan M. Blankstein, president and founder of the HOPE Foundation
--Anne L. Bryant, executive director, National School Boards Association
--Linda Darling-Hammond, professor, Stanford University
--Dan Domenech, executive director, American Assoc. of School Administrators
--Sharon Lynn Kagan, professor, Yale University
--Debby Kasak, executive director, National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform
--Michael L. Lomax, president, United Negro College Fund
--Pedro A. Noguera, professor, New York University
--Karen Pittman, executive director, Forum for Youth Investment
--Joe Williams, executive director, Democrats for Education Reform
--John I. Wilson, executive director, National Education Association

Scores Stable as More Minorities Take SAT

This from the Washington Post:

SAT performance held steady for 2008 high school graduates even as participation rose among minority students and those who are part of the first generation in their families to go to college, the College Board reported yesterday...

...Nationwide, the number of students taking the SAT surpassed 1.5 million for the first time, up 8 percent from five years ago and almost 30 percent over the past decade. Forty percent of test-takers were minority students, up from 39 percent last year, and 36 percent were among a group described as first-generation collegegoers, up from 35 percent.

College Board officials considered the boost in participation evidence that the high school students who aspire to a college degree are growing more ethnically and economically diverse.

Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, a nonprofit organization based in New York, said the pool of test-takers "more than ever . . . reflects the face of education in this country."

"It's essential that all students strive to attend college -- and then succeed in their classes and, ultimately, graduate. We're gratified to see that our country is moving increasingly toward being a nation of college graduates," he said.

Some educators, policymakers and others concerned about high school quality saw the consistency in scores from last year as a bright spot. Scores on standardized exams often dip when the number of test-takers increases.

Education experts said that recent efforts to improve the quality of high school courses and expand academic options, to ensure that students are ready for college, are possibly starting to take hold.

"Some of these kids wouldn't have taken the SAT just a few years ago. They wouldn't have wanted to. They wouldn't have been encouraged to. And both are changing," said former West Virginia governor Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group seeking to improve high schools. "I also take it as a challenge. It's not fair to build the expectation level and not be able to deliver on the quality of education." ...

How Much Does a Dropout Cost?

This from the Ashland Daily Independent:

The real cost

The entire state loses when teenager drops out of school

Believe it or not, high school dropout rates are among the most difficult numbers to accurately determine.

That’s because the rates annually reported by individual schools and school districts show only a small percentage of students quitting school. But one gets a much different picture when comparisons are made in the number of students in a high school’s freshman class and the number of graduating seniors four years later. Those numbers show that as many as 30 percent of the students in a freshman class fail to complete high school.

A 2006 report by the Southern Regional Education Board found that a higher percentage of Kentucky teenagers are dropping out of school than their counterparts in other states, and the numbers are even more alarming when broken down by race and gender.

For example, in 2003, 83 percent of the white females and 76 of white males graduated from high school in the U.S. However, in Kentucky, the graduation rates for white females was a dismal 69 percent and an even lower 63 percent for white males. A higher percentage of black males and female and Hispanic males did graduate in Kentucky than the national average, but the numbers in both Kentucky and the nation as a whole were dismal.

Nationwide, the SREB reports that only 45 percent of black males and 50 percent of Hispanic males completed high school in 2003. In Kentucky, the graduation rate was 56 percent for black males and 62 percent for Hispanic males. Kentucky also reported that almost two out of every three black females (65 percent) completed high school, compared to the national average of 59 percent.But those are just faceless numbers.

Other statistics show that those lacking at least a high school degree are destined to spend their lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Today’s economy demands more and more college graduates; those without high school degrees simply cannot qualify for most jobs. And that impacts not just the economic stability of the dropouts but also the economy of an entire state and region.

In fact, according to an estimate by the Alliance for Excellent Education — a privately funded education advocacy organization headed by former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise — the more than 16,000 dropouts from the class of 2007 in Kentucky cost the federal government some $788.1 million in additional tax revenue.Nationwide, Wise adds that “had all of the dropouts from the class of 2007 received their high school diplomas, they could have contributed enough money in additional tax revenue over the course of their lifetimes to match the amount of discretionary funding that the U.S. Department of Education received for an entire year. If that isn’t the best example of how education pays for itself, I don’t know what is.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average annual income for a high school dropout in 2005 was almost $10,000 less than for a high school graduate. In a single year the average high school dropout pays $1,302 in federal income taxes compared to $3,085 for a high school graduate.

The message is clear: When young people drop out of high school, it not only negatively impacts their economic status for the rest of their lives, it affects us all. Nowhere else is that more evident than in this region where a poorly educated adult population is a major obstacle to economic development.