Decreasing Dropouts

By Khayriyyah Muhammad

Reporter

Every year, over 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States alone. However, the number of students who dropout of high school has fallen significantly since 1990.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, “the status dropout rate decreased from 12.1 percent in 1990 to 6.5 percent in 2014.”

About 25 percent of high school freshman fail to graduate from high school on time, according to dosomething.org. The percentage of graduating Latino students has significantly increased. In 2010, 71.4 percent received their diploma vs. 61.4 percent in 2006. However, Asian-American and White students are still far more likely to graduate than Latino & African-American students.

A high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate over their lifetime, and almost a million dollars less than a college graduate. Almost 2,000 high schools across the U.S. graduate less than 60 percent of their students. Most high school dropouts commit about 75 percent of crimes.

“If I dropped out it would probably be because school was too hard and the life I was living outside of school couldn’t let me live the life I wanted to live in school” said junior Justin Smith.

More than 27 percent say that they leave school because they are failing too many classes. Nearly 26 percent report boredom as a contributing cause. About 26 percent also say that they dropped out to become caregivers, and more than 20 percent say that school simply wasn’t relevant to their lives.

According to Learning It Off, many common reasons students drop out is because of getting held back, to use drugs, becoming pregnant, needing to make money to support their families, etc. Only a small percentage say that they drop out because of school environments, ineffective teachers, residential instability, mental health issues, or getting kicked out of school.

“Kids may drop out of school because maybe it was a bad area they were living in and they couldn’t focus on school and try to protect themselves at the same time” said sophomore Jaden Bynum.

Parents and teachers should look for warning signs such as, failing grades, drug use, sexual promiscuity, gang activity, or ailing family members who require assistance. In my opinion I think students could drop out because they could have a older sibling about to graduate and maybe they don’t want to be in school alone.

“I dropped out because I had a older brother and he was graduating, and I didn’t want to be left alone in the school because it really wasn’t a good environment” said Albert Reliford.