This year’s annual Legal Aid Justice Center fundraiser focused on the dropout crisis in Virginia—its causes and consequences, as well as initiatives to get communities involved in addressing the problem.
A few pieces of data from the event: Fifty-five students drop out of school every day in Virginia, and more than 900 students are suspended every day in state schools. Those schools with the greatest number of suspensions also have the highest dropout rates. Almost two-thirds of state and federal inmates are high school dropouts.
"What we invest in education is something that we have to live with for many years,” said Congressman Bobby Scott, representative of Virginia’s Third District, in his keynote address. Scott told a packed audience at the Paramount Theater that education must be the foundation for a successful future, for both the state and the nation.
The cost of dropouts on society is also staggering. Dropouts “are stuck,” said Scott, in a socioeconomic stratum that earns between $20,000 and $30,000 a year. In a lifetime, dropouts make $1 million less than college graduates. In 2007, dropouts cost taxpayers more than $292,000 per capita in lower tax revenues and incarceration costs. But, as Scott emphasized, the highest cost to society comes in terms of global competition.
“The reason businesses want to locate here in the United States is they know they can find well-educated workers that they may not be able to find anywhere else," said Scott. "And when we start losing the advantage of education, we are losing the competitive advantage in the global economy."
The program featured a student-produced documentary, Pushed, which focused on a school district in Connecticut. The film chronicled instances of "dropout"—when a student stops attending school—and "pushed out"—when a student is encouraged to move to adult education by school administrators.
After the screening, Angela Ciolfi, legal director of Just Children at the Legal Aid Justice Center, remarked that dropping out "is not something that happens in one day," but corresponds with a steady decline in the student’s academic results. Charlottesville City Schools Superintendent Rosa Atkins added that the local community has made a commitment to care for students from the age of 3 onward.
And Virginia is seeing some signs of improvement. Since 2008, the state dropout rate has decreased to 8.2 percent from 8.7 percent. Still, 8,018 students dropped out last year across the state.
To read more about a program at Charlottesville High School that is dramatically increasing the school’s graduation rate, click here.
