Editorial: Producing dropouts

Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007 | 1:45 a.m.

Nevada once again ranks high on another undesirable list - the state had the third-highest percentage of so-called dropout factories: high schools with poor retention rates.

The study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University defined a dropout factory as a school where no more than six of 10 freshmen make it to graduation. The study found 44 percent of Nevada's high schools fit that criterion.

Certainly Nevada's transient population helps boost that state's number - the study does not differentiate between dropouts and transfers - but the transient rate is not solely to blame. The state's schools struggle largely because Nevada's political leaders have not fully funded schools and the social services that help students succeed.

One of the most troubling issues the study found was a higher number of dropout factories in poor and minority neighborhoods.

"If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?" study author Bob Balfanz said.

Balfanz found students often drop out because schools don't have the resources to help those who face any number of serious challenges, from being academically unprepared to having a learning disability to having to work to support a family.

He goes on to say the issue is bigger than the individual who ends up with a "ticket to the underclass" after dropping out. "When the majority or near majority of students from entire neighborhoods and communities fail to graduate, the social and economic costs are profound and far reaching," Balfanz wrote.

Nevada's lack of support for schools, much less the lack of support for social services to help poor families, is disgraceful. Most people shy away from this hard truth because the solution to funding education includes the taboo of Nevada politics - raising taxes. However, the bottom line is, the cost of not fully funding education is much higher than paying for it.