Engaged Students are High Performing Students:
Paving Success Highways for All Students to
Achieve Their True Potential

V. Scott H. Solberg, Ph. D.
Center on Education and Work
University of Wisconsin – Madison

Abstract. “Engaged Students are High Performing Students: Paving Success Highways for All Students to Achieve Their True Potential,” Dr. Scott Solberg explains one negative consequence of the No Child Left Behind Act—the potential for increased school dropouts by disengaged students—and the resulting economic impact high dropout rates have on communities. Through case studies, Dr. Solberg goes on to offer methods for identifying disengaged students at-risk of dropping out of school. He concludes his paper by discussing how teachers using the Success Highways program in their classrooms can re-engage students in both their academic and personal lives, and thereby prevent or effectively reduce dropout rates.

Educators want all students to succeed. Currently, however, there is little incentive under No Child Left Behind (NCLB; Resnick, 2003) for educators to keep low-performing students in school who otherwise will not demonstrate reading or math proficiency. An unintended consequence of the NCLB legislation is that students dropping out of school may actually help schools meet adequate yearly progress indicators. The loophole is that only students attending for a full academic year (FAY) are counted toward proficiency because the goal is to hold schools accountable only for the students they teach. An interesting scenario unfolds when you consider the following: If 50 out of 100 tenth grade students score above the proficiency cut score, then 50 percent are deemed proficient; if 15 of the students who will not meet proficiency standards leave the school before meeting full academic year requirements the proficiency percentage increases to 58.8 percent. The problem is that failing to be retained by a given school in the middle and high school years creates a pathway of failure that eventually results in dropping out (Jerald 2007).

Dropouts Severely Impact School Funding and the Local Economy

The dire economic consequences of high dropout rates have both immediate, short-term consequences to schools as well as long-term catastrophic consequences to our communities. From a public and charter school perspective, students who are not retained annually reduce the income schools receive from the state. If each student provides $5,000 in state income and every year 25 students fail to return in the 10th grade, the cost of each dropout cohort totals $375,000 in lost revenue for the remaining three years they would otherwise have attended the school. Compounded after three years of losing 25 students, a total of 150 students would be lost to the school, which creates an accumulated annual loss of $750,000 in potential income. Estimating that each teacher costs a school $90,000 (including fringe benefits), the total cost to the schools in personnel is eight classroom teachers.

Today’s world of work demands not only a higher level of literacy, numeracy, and interpersonal skills, but also two years of post-secondary training beyond the high school degree.

“Every nine seconds in America a student becomes a dropout,” proclaim Martin and Halperin (2006), who paint an even direr picture regarding the economic impact of dropouts for our communities. Failing to achieve a high school degree creates added costs to the community as well as reduces the revenue levels needed to support those costs. Costs to the community include lower health and auto insurance rates, higher incarceration rates, higher rates of individuals qualified for free food programs, and higher rates of public financial assistance. Muenning (2005) estimates that “if only one-third of high school dropouts were to earn a high school diploma, federal savings in reduced costs for food stamps, housing assistance, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families would amount to $10.8 billion annually” (Martin and Halperin 2006, viii). And, failing to receive a high school degree severely reduces a community’s revenue stream. The U.S. Department of the Treasury (Aizcorbe, Kennickell, and Moore 2003) randomly surveyed over 4,000 adults and found that the gross median income for each family whose head of household possessed a college degree was $50,800 more annually than for families in which the head of household never received a high school degree. The median net worth estimates for a family whose head of household possessed a college degree was over $185,000 more than families in which the head of household never received a high school degree. Across their lifetime, high school dropouts collectively cost society $260 billion dollars (Martin and Halperin 2006).

Dropouts Are Not Ready to Compete for Occupations that Demand 21st Century Skills

The reason high school dropouts are not able to compete economically in the United States is due to not possessing the 21st century skills that are necessary to secure occupations that offer livable wages (Olson 2007). Today’s world of work demands not only a higher level of literacy, numeracy, and interpersonal skills, but also two years of post-secondary training beyond the high school degree. Gewertz (2007) summarized the shift in work-readiness indicators to rely more heavily on possessing “soft skills”:

In an increasingly global, technological economy…it isn’t enough to be academically strong. Young people must also be able to work comfortably with people from other cultures, solve problems creatively, write and speak well, think in a multidisciplinary way, and evaluate information critically. And they need to be punctual, dependable, and industrious. (p. 25)

To be ready to compete for occupations in the 21st century, students need to be engaged in designing their own success strategies for establishing the range of skills needed to compete effectively in a 21st century world of work.