Importance

The Importance of Education Reform

The societal and economic costs directly related to poor performing, failing and unsafe schools are staggering. The loss of human potential, the loss of tax revenues and the increased tax burden of a growing drop out rate, failing schools and broken communities are having a measurable and detrimental affect on our state’s economy and the quality of life for all Missourians.

Here are a few alarming statics:

• The annual cost of just one year’s class of dropouts (estimated at 17,711 in 2005) is $71 million, or about $4,000 per dropout annually.
• Independent estimates place the state’s overall graduation at between 73 to 76%, rather than the 85.7% reported by the state in 2005.
• Dropouts, on average, earn about $10,000 less per year than high school graduates; the 17,711 dropouts in 2005 represent more than $177 million in lost earnings each year.
• The total loss of earnings in 2004 of all dropouts, age 20-64, was $3.1 billion.
• The lower earnings of dropouts cost the state lost income tax revenue of between $158 and $177 million annually.
• The unemployment rate for high school dropouts is 20.1% compared to only 4.4% for high school graduates.
• Dropouts cost the state millions in incarceration and Medicaid.
• A dropout is twice as likely to be incarcerated as a high school graduate. The lifetime incarceration costs associated with just one year’s worth of high school dropouts is $28 million,or an average of $1,560 per white male dropout and $2,600 per African-American male dropout.