A $2.7 billion bailout: Graduating more Michigan high schoolers
Given the news of the past two weeks about financial crashes and investigations and bailouts, it’s completely appropriate for this fall’s political candidates to stay focused on the economy. It’s the top thing on most American’s minds.
So everyone should be eager for a plan to pump $2.7 billion back into our local, state and national economies, right? How do we do it?
Graduate 21,185 more students from Michigan high schools.
That’s the number of students who dropped out instead of graduating in 2007. That’s 21,185 young people who face a tough future – struggling to find good paying jobs, affordable housing and accessible health care. 21,185 young people who are more likely to commit crimes and end up in Michigan prisons. And 21,185 current or future parents whose children are more likely to drop out, continuing the vicious cycle.
Aside from these serious costs to each individual dropout, there’s a collective cost to our economy as well.
According to Columbia University’s prestigious Teachers College, boosting high school graduation rates would save $127,000 per new graduate through extra tax revenues, reduced costs of public health, crime and justice, and decreased welfare payments.
Let’s do the math:
21,185 x $127,000 = $2,690,495,000
Every year that passes without a solution to the dropout crisis drains a whopping $2.7 billion from local, state and national coffers. We can’t afford to keep letting these students slip through the cracks.
That’s why MEA – in partnership with several other organizations – is spearheading a statewide series of hearings on the dropout crisis. Since May, we’ve pulled together hundreds of students, parents, educators and community activists to discuss the various causes of school dropouts and what we can do, both in and out of school, to get more students through to graduation.
There are two hearings left – one tomorrow (Sept. 25) for students only at Ferndale’s Taft Education Center and another for the general public on Oct. 2 at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. For more details – or to testify online if you can’t make a hearing in person – go to www.mea.org/dropouts.
Or just talk about it here. Post a comment about your experiences and what works – or doesn’t work – in keeping students in school.
By Doug Pratt, MEA Communications