Facts

• One in three high school students will not graduate with their class.
• In California, the dropout rate is estimated to be about 30% among all students and as high as 50% among minority students.
• There are 3.5 million dropouts between the ages of 16 and 25.
• In one given day, there are more young male dropouts in prison than there are on the job.

The Impact

• Dropouts are more likely to be unemployed, live in poverty, experience poor health, depend on social services, be divorced and single parents with children, and end up in jail that their graduating classmates.
• High school graduates ear $175 more per week than dropouts.
• A dropout will ear $300,000 less than a high school graduate over a lifetime of full-time employment, and they’ll make $1 million less than a college graduate.
• High school dropouts are four times more likely than college graduates to be unemployed.
• The combined income and tax loss from a single year’s dropouts is $192 billion.
• Each young person who drops out and moves into a life of drugs and crime costs the nation between $1.7 million and $2.3 million over his or her lifetime.

Cause for Hope

• If they could do it all over again, 74% of dropouts would have stayed in school.  Many dropout for a variety of reasons, but they all agree that dropping out was a mistake.
• Of teens that dropped out or are thinking of dropping out, over half say that they eventually want to finish high school.
• One third of them say they want to go on to the community college.