The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates that if the 1.2 million high school dropouts from the Class of 2007 had earned their diplomas instead of dropping out, the U.S. economy would have seen an additional $329 billion in wages over these students' lifetimes. And that's only for one year-the country can expect to lose well over $300 billion in potential earnings next year as well, due to dropouts from the Class of 2008. If this annual pattern is allowed to continue, more than 12 million students will drop out of school during the next decade at a cost to the nation of more than $3 trillion.

Why is this an issue now? As we all know, there have always been students who didn't finish school, and many have gone on to do well in life. However, today's economy is much more global. Whereas past generations of Americans only had to compete for jobs with students from Boston or Birmingham, today's students compete with students from Bangalore and Bangkok. The rapidly growing markets of the past quarter century have created a booming global economy and very real international competition. And, based on the most recent international data, American students are already coming up short.

In fact, nearly every international assessment shows that American students typically fall short of their counterparts in other countries. Thirty years ago, the United States was the world leader in the quantity and quality of both high school and college graduates, but the U.S. has fallen to 18th of 23 industrialized countries. The United States has remained similarly stagnant in the attainment of higher education degrees. In reading, American fifteen-year-olds rank fifteenth of twenty-nine OECD countries in reading literacy. In mathematics literacy, American fifteen-year-olds rank twenty-fourth of twenty-nine OECD countries.

To learn more, click on a category below.