FAILING OUR YOUNG PEOPLE

(Nathan Mains is the president and state director of Communities in Schools of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.)

Here’s a brief quiz: Can you name the nation with the following education problems?

-- 1 in 5 ninth-graders fail to graduate from high school.

-- 40 percent of minority students fail to graduate on time.

--170 students drop out each day.

Somalia, Afghanistan or Timor- Leste, perhaps? In reality, this is a trick question. The answer isn’t a country at all. It’s Pennsylvania. Our state ranks in the bottom 10 of all states in graduation rates.

Isn’t the goal of education to graduate with the skills to be successful in a career and in life? Yet Pennsylvania’s severe dropout problem never seems to make headlines.

As we turn our attention to the 2010-11 state budget, policy-makers must acknowledge this problem and shape their goals to address it.

Whether we like it or not, every dropout has an effect on every Pennsylvania taxpayer through a direct link to crime, health problems, and unemployment.

In addition, the annual losses in income taxes for America’s dropouts exceed $50 billion, money that’s desperately needed as our state and federal governments continue to deal with an uncertain economic future.

The time has come to find out why we are failing to finish the job in educating every single child -- and to do something about it. The solution must be a collaborative effort that includes the families of our at-risk students, as well as educators, social service providers and local community leaders.

Answers lie not only in our schools, but in our local, communitybased organizations and groups.

Our model at Communities In Schools advocates for comprehensive services to be made available from a variety of resources so that needs of students can be met and the child can succeed. That can only happen if our state policy-makers and lawmakers provide the resources needed.

We can invest in solutions now, or we can continue the status quo and watch many of our children struggle in an education system ill-prepared to meet their needs.

Choosing the latter option will cost us a great deal more than money -- it will cost us our future.