Someone drops out, you lose out

In our Living Museum piece we focused on high school drop outs. Starting out I did not think this issue was as important as other issues such as feeding the hungry. What I did realize from this project is education is the root of the later major issues faced in society. For example, 44 million adults in the U.S. cannot read a child's book. Reading to your child helps develop their basic language skills and when these skills are not developed by the age of 5, then that child is 4 times more likely to drop out. A study found that nearly two-thirds of inmates are dropouts. I am not saying that all drop outs will end up in jail or that if you do not read to your child they will dropout, but there is an obvious correlation between the two.

Another fact I found interesting and impacting is the cost that dropouts take on the general public. Dropouts compromise nearly half of the heads of households on welfare, and each year's new class of dropouts will cost taxpayers more than $200 billion over the course of their lifetimes in lost earnings and tax revenues, not to mention the cost of the social services that require.

There are so many facts and shocking statistics we found as a group regarding high school dropouts. The impact they have on our society is everywhere especially in taxes. I hope that we made our audience aware of the issue and inspired them to go out and volunteer with the organizations that assist with dropouts.