Each dropout represents a half-million dollars in lifetime economic loss, unless they get the help they need to graduate
[/fusion_text][fusion_text columns=”” column_min_width=”” column_spacing=”” rule_style=”default” rule_size=”” rule_color=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=””]Every effort to keep high school students from dropping out is worth it — not just to them, but to taxpayers across the state.
Dropouts don’t just cost themselves their short-term future. They cost taxpayers over the rest of their lifetime. A 2018 report from the Arizona Mayors Education Roundtable revealed the value of that price tag, and it’s staggering.
According to the report, each dropout represents $498,920 — nearly a half-million dollars — in estimated lifetime loss to Arizona’s economy:
“[These estimated losses] typically result from lower earnings and extra costs associated with health care and crime. Other smaller, but nonetheless notable, losses include higher welfare spending, tax distortions, and lost worker productivity. Fundamentally, these losses occur because people with low educational attainment are more likely (than people with higher educational attainment) to have lower incomes, higher unemployment, lower health status, and greater involvement in the criminal justice system.”
When you consider that more than 18,000 Arizona students drop out each year, the financial impact skyrockets. This affects everyone.
“The prosperity of Arizona’s cities and towns is dependent, in large part, on youth becoming educated and contributing members of their communities,” the report continues. “School and work are central to ensuring that youth develop the human capital they require to lead successful lives.”
A Single School’s Impact
So what can a single school do to reverse the financial loss of dropouts? How much could one school save state taxpayers and positively impact the economy by turning nearly 1,000 would-be dropouts into graduates every year, and helping other schools in Arizona keep their students on track for graduation?
The answer is an estimated $415 million — and that’s the financial impact of Primavera Online High School in one year alone.
In 2017, Primavera graduated almost 1,000 students who were at high risk of dropping out, and most of them were at least one year behind after attending other high schools. Primavera educated over 22,000 students in 2017, 20% of whom were adults between 18 and 21. Many of these students were at risk of not graduating at all, needed to make up credits, or, for any number of reasons, didn’t do well in traditional brick-and-mortar schools.
Primavera is the only school of its kind; it enables students to take 4-6 week online courses during the school year with classes opening every two weeks. It also offers students an opportunity to attend during the summer to pick up credits while enrolled in their current high school. This gives them the unique opportunity to quickly catch up on credits and graduate on time, and with their peers.
Measuring Lives
Each student who graduates with Primavera’s help reduces the financial impact on our state. But more than that, it builds up members of society who are more likely to contribute to our communities financially, socially and professionally. In many cases, these are students whose previous teachers have given up on them, and many have given up on themselves.
In that way, we may never know the full impact that enrolling at a charter school like Primavera can make in a young person’s life. It’s more than any financial estimate can adequately explain. It’s revealed instead in the lives of the young women and men we serve as they graduate and begin a life many expected they would never have.
And that’s the kind of impact we can all celebrate.
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