Dropping Out is Expensive, duh!

A new national study analyzes the economic loss high school dropouts place on the economies of the 50 states. Not surprisingly, given its size, New Mexico suffers from a relatively heavy burden. In fact, the class of 2006 dropouts are expected to cost taxpayers $3.3 billion.
For some reason, although the study was released in January, the Santa Fe New Mexican failed to report the results until May and when they did, they gave $111 million as the economic loss of graduation. Strange…
More troubling is the fact that many of our elected officials actually believe that simply raising the dropout age will stop high school students from dropping out.
If New Mexico is serious about improving education results and cutting the dropout rate, perhaps we need to offer students and parents more choices when it comes to education? After all, only by forcing schools to teach and even compete to attract students can we break out of the current socialist education model.