Washington, D.C. - This is a watershed year for American education, with Congress currently working on a renewal of the No Child Left Behind Act.
In 2004, the last year for which data is available, only 64 percent of Hawaii’s students graduated from high school on time.
And about 42 percent of the students in Hawaii who started ninth grade earlier this month read so far below grade level that they are at serious risk of not graduating in four years.
“The poor graduation rate is a wake-up call that we can and must do more to help our high school students,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “All of us pay the price -- not just the dropout, who is looking at a severely limited future, but also the rest of us, who need these new members of the workforce prepared to support the nation in a twenty-first century world that is becoming more and more competitive.”
The Alliance for Excellent Education, to help illustrate the potential economic benefits of an improved high school system that better prepares all high school students to graduate prepared for college and work, calculates that:
Hawaii would save more than $92 million in health care costs for each class of dropouts, over their lifetimes, had these dropouts stayed in school and earned their diplomas.
- Hawaii households would have over $191 million more in accumulated wealth if all heads of households had graduated from high school.
- More than $352 million would be added to Hawaii’s economy by 2020 if students of color graduated at the same rate as white students.
- If Hawaii’s high schools graduated all students ready for college, the state would save more than $13 million a year in community college remediation costs and lost earnings.
- Hawaii’s economy would see a combination of savings and revenue of more than $18 million in reduced crime spending and increased earnings each year if the male high school graduation rate increased by just 5 percent.
Wise said, “While well-intentioned, the current NCLB simply does not address the dropout problem and permits far too many students to leave high school without an adequate education. Congress has the opportunity, right at this moment, to ensure that the law extends to all students. Now is the time to build on the ideals of ‘No Child Left Behind’ and pass legislation that leads the nation toward ‘every child a graduate.’”
The Alliance for Excellent Education is a Washington-based policy, research, and advocacy organization that works to make every child a graduate, prepared for postsecondary education and success in life. For more information about the Alliance for Excellent Education, please visit: http://www.all4ed.org
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