Infographic - The Cost of Dropping Out

The school district I work in has a stated goal of having 80% of graduate go on to pursue post-secondary education.We (my school district) has all kinds of workshops, seminars, and plenty of statistics for students in an effort to reach that 80% goal. It's great goal. But an equally important goal is having all students graduate from high school. This morning I found the infographic you see below on Michael Smith's Principals Page blog. The infographic shows the costs to individuals and to the community of dropping out of high school.



Brought to you by Teacher Certification Map and MAT@USC | Master’s of Arts in Teaching

Applications for Education
When I saw this infographic around 6:30 this morning, little did I know that later in the day I would be having a long conversation with one of my students who is considering dropping out. This student is 18 years old and, through a mix of mistakes on his part and life dealing him a tough hand, has only 5 credits toward graduation. This is not the first time this year that we have had conversations about dropping out, but today he actually had a "withdraw from school" form in his hand. We've talked before about how hard it is to make a living without graduating from high school. He was in my classroom when we did a mock economy activity called Life on Minimum Wage. But today, we didn't talk about the economics. Today, I simply asked, "what will you do when you wake up and don't have to come to school?" He didn't have an answer so I just asked him to hold off on the paperwork until he has an answer for me. I'm hoping he doesn't have a good answer for at least another year.