Pubdate: Fri, 9 Oct 2009
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: A12
Copyright: 2009 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Sam Dillon
Referenced: The study http://drugsense.org/url/UgC5WNtW
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?247 (Crime Policy - United States)

STUDY FINDS HIGH RATE OF IMPRISONMENT AMONG DROPOUTS

On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school 
dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 
young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the 
effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for 
low-skill workers is plunging.

The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in 
four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise 
institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares 
with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.

Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other 
government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, 
workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high 
school dropouts.

"We're trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st 
century United States," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for 
Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of 
researchers that prepared the report. "It's one of the country's 
costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates -- it's scary."

A coalition of civil rights and public education advocacy groups and 
a network of alternative schools in Chicago commissioned the report 
as part of a push for new educational opportunities for the nation's 
6.2 million high school dropouts.

"The dropout rate is driving the nation's increasing prison 
population, and it's a drag on America's economic competitiveness," 
said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of 
the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that 
commissioned the report. "This report makes it clear that every 
American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma."

The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working 
life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that 
figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less 
and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also 
includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts 
and of incarcerating those who turn to crime.

Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at 
the University of California, Los Angeles, said the study was 
consistent with other economic studies of the dropout crisis, though 
he said the methodology of its cost-benefit analysis "lacked transparency."

"The report's strength is that it reveals in clear terms that there's 
a real crisis with the high numbers of young, especially minority 
males, who drop out of school and wind up incarcerated," Mr. Losen said.

Previous studies have come up with estimates of the same order of 
magnitude on the social cost of low graduation rates. A 2007 study by 
Teachers College, Princeton and City University of New York 
researchers, for instance, estimated that society could save $209,000 
in prison and other costs for every potential dropout who could be 
helped to complete high school.

The new report, in its analysis of 2008 unemployment rates, found 
that 54 percent of dropouts ages 16 to 24 were jobless, compared with 
32 percent for high school graduates of the same age, and 13 percent 
for those with a college degree.

Again, the statistics were worse for young African-American dropouts, 
whose unemployment rate last year was 69 percent, compared with 54 
percent for whites and 47 percent for Hispanics. The unemployment 
rate among young Hispanics was lower, the report said, because 
included in that category were many illegal immigrants, who compete 
successfully for jobs with native-born youths.

The unemployment rates cited for all groups have climbed several 
points in 2009 because of the recession, Mr. Sum said.

Young female dropouts were nine times more likely to have become 
single mothers than young women who went on to earn college degrees, 
the report said, citing census data for 2006 and 2007.

The number of unmarried young women having children has increased 
sharply in some communities in part, Mr. Sum said, because large 
numbers of young men have dropped out of school and are jobless year 
round. As a result, young women do not view them as having the 
wherewithal to support a family.

"None of these guys can afford to own a home, they just don't have 
any money," he said. "And as a result, any time they father a child 
it's out of wedlock. It wasn't like this 30 years ago."

He cited his hometown, Gary, Ind., as an example. "Back in the 1970s, 
my friends in Gary would quit school in senior year and go to work at 
U.S. Steel and make a good living, and young guys in Michigan would 
go to work in an auto plant," he said. "You just can't do that 
anymore. Today, you have a lot of dropouts who are jobless year round." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake