Reduce dropouts, save millions in Charlotte

If the 11,200 who dropped out had actually stayed and graduated from schools in the Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord area last year, they could be generating $63 million more a year in earnings for this area. They also could boost state tax revenues by $6.5 million annually and be spending $46 million more on services and products annually.

That's part of the value the Alliance for Excellent Education put on reducing dropouts in eight metro areas of North Carolina in a report released Monday.

The Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord area logged the most dropouts of the areas examined - more than twice as many as the area with the next highest dropout figure (Raleigh-Cary with 5,200) - and thus had the most to gain from declines in the number of dropouts.

According to the Alliance, "the study demonstrates the gross increase in important economic factors such as individual earnings, job creation, spending and investment, home and auto sales, tax revenues, and human capital based on reducing by half the number of students from the Class of 2010 who failed to graduate on time."

“The best economic stimulus is a high school diploma,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “From the individual student to the bank branch manager, new car salesman, or Realtor, everyone wins when more students graduate from high school.” For the entire report and information on other states and other N.C. communities assessed - Greensboro/High Point, Fayetteville, Durham/Chapel Hill and Asheville, Wilmington and Winston-Salem - go to findings for North Carolina and the nation as a whole.