A recent report from the U.S. Department’s Institute of Education Statistics (IES) shows that Arizona still has a relatively high dropout rate for high school students, a fact that is costing the state and the students economically. According to the most recently available data, Arizona’s current “event dropout rate” is 7.6 percent, almost twice that of the national rate for the same period. Arizona is one of only five states with an event dropout rate of over six percent. The others are  Nevada, 7.7 percent; Colorado, 7.8 percent; Alaska, 8.0 percent; and Louisiana, 8.4 percent. The event dropout rate measures the percentage of students who left high school between the beginning of one school year and the beginning of the next without obtaining a high school diploma or GED. In its report High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 2007, the department of education adds data for the 2005-2006 school year for all states to its compendium of data that reaches back to 1972. Nationwide, high school dropout rates have trended downward significantly since then, including in Arizona. However, Arizona remains relatively higher than than most other states. In 1993-94, the dropout rate was 13.7 percent, and continued to decrease for several years, reaching 8.4 percent in 1998-99 before increasing again in 2000-2001. It reached a low of 6.2 percent in 2004-2005 before coming back up to its most recently documented level of 7.6 percent in 2005-2006. These data are taken from the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) common core of data.

Another significant measure included in the study is the four-year completion rate, which measures what percentage of students who enter public high schools in a given year complete it with a diploma or GED within four years. In school year 2002-2003, Arizona had an estimated 76,747 ninth graders. Four years later, it issued 54,091 diplomas, for a completion rate of 70.5 percent. That doesn’t sound bad, until you consider that the 29.5 percent that didn’t graduate represent 22,656 students. Consider also that the median annual income of a person who completes only high school is roughly $16,000 higher than a person who does not, and you see that by not graduating those 22,656 students, Arizona has lost out on about $362 million each year that those students work before finishing school or earning a GED, if in fact they ever do. This number does not take into account the added earnings of a person who completes high school and then goes on to a college, university, or trade school.

Encouraging innovative approaches to improve high school graduation rates in Arizona, especially among lower-income and non-white students, is a key focus of the High Standards and High Expectations the campaign is trying to bring to the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. If you have stories about interesting approaches you would like to share, please feel free to email them to blog@pennykotterman.com, or share them in the comments. If you want to get involved in making higher-quality public education a reality for Arizona’s children, you can volunteer or donate right now.