Armando Hernandez dropped out of school during the fall of his senior year, riding the train and watching television to kill time while his classmates studied.
Two months later, as he volunteered to dish up dinner at a homeless shelter, Hernandez realized the mistake he had made.
“It hit me that if I continued to be out of school, I could be the one sitting here,” said Hernandez, 18, who is scheduled to graduate in June from Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School, an alternative program on Chicago’s West Side. “It terrified me.”
Hernandez’s turnabout came before the costs to him and to society mounted, as noted in a report set for release Monday.
The report shows that the consequences of leaving high school without a diploma are higher than ever because the job market offers few well-paying options for workers with no high school credentials.
The analysis of the social, health and job ramifications of dropping out calculates the financial toll on dropouts and society. The results will be unveiled during a forum Monday in Chicago by a state task force launched last year to focus on re-enrolling dropouts.
In Illinois, an estimated 210,000 young people ages 16 to 24 aren’t in school and don’t have a high school diploma, according to the report’s analysis of U.S. Census data. In Chicago, almost half the students who begin high school do not finish.
“This shows what their lives will look like without the social skills getting a diploma means, without the academic skills getting a diploma means,” said Jack Wuest, director of the Chicago Alternative Schools Network, which serves struggling students and dropouts. “It’s staggering, absolutely staggering.”
High school dropouts likely will earn a third of what a college graduate takes home annually, the report found. In Illinois, students who never graduated pocketed an average $15,650 in 2005 compared with $22,940 for those who completed high school and $50,220 for college graduates.
High school graduates have expected lifetime earnings of $1.1 million while dropouts were projected to earn $723,000.
The combination of factory closings, business shifting abroad and competition for entry-level jobs has left even those with a high school diploma few options to stay financially solvent.
“Those kinds of jobs are no longer,” said Jeff Mays, president of the Illinois Business Roundtable. “The consequences for a dropout decision today are even bigger.”
Diminished salaries are only part of the risk, said Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum, author of the study.
Students who never complete high school spend more than twice as many years in poverty than do high school graduates, the report shows. They are twice as likely to rely on public assistance for health care and four times as likely to be incarcerated.
Women struggle more than men. Women without a diploma typically earned $8,472 compared with $21,421 for men.
“Women without diplomas do really poorly in the labor market,” Sum said. “They work less, they earn less and in many cases there’s no other adult to help make up for their shortfall.”
Such risk carries with it a public expense, he said.
The average cost incurred by taxpayers for every high school dropout in Illinois is $185,000 over a lifetime. Nationwide the economic cost is $250,000. The figures consider state assistance collections and the cost of incarcerations, Sum said. Statewide, two-thirds of those in prison never graduated from high school, Illinois Department of Corrections data show.
“This dramatizes, in what I think are very alarming numbers, the cost, not only the cost in dollars, but the cost in human capital,” said Jesse Ruiz, Illinois State Board of Education chairman and head of the state task force charged with re-enrolling high school dropouts.
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tmalone@tribune.com
