    
Issue Brief #2: Connecticut’s achievement gap has consequences. While we may never be able to quantify the terrible effects of the gap on students’ hopes and dreams, researchers have measured the costs that illiteracy, low graduation rates, and a poor grasp of basic skills impose on our communities, our state, and our country.
Unfortunately, this high level of investment has failed to provide a commensurate return in student achievement. In fact, Connecticut’s achievement gap at all grades, in all subjects, for all disadvantaged groups, is among the largest in the nation. What is this failure to educate all our children costing us? Measuring the Costs To help answer this question researchers have focused much of their work on the different life outcomes between high school graduates and high school dropouts. Since dropouts are more likely to lack basic academic skills and since academically troubled schools are more likely to produce a higher percentage of dropouts, investigating the costs of dropping out can serve as a proxy for the social and economic costs of an inadequate education. Earnings. Studies show that each additional year of completed education translates into 11 percent higher annual earnings over a person’s lifetime. On average, high school dropouts earn just 37 cents for every dollar earned by high school graduates. Based on current dropout rates, the national economy loses $192 billion every year from the loss of earning resulting from the high school dropout rate.2 Health. As measured by rates of mortality, morbidity, and disease, the average 45-yearold high school dropout has the health of a 65-year-old high school graduate. Likewise, the typical 18-year-old high school dropout has the health of a 40-yearold college graduate.3 On average, high school graduates live 9.2 years longer than high school dropouts.4 Crime. Researchers have demonstrated that more years in school strongly correlate with personal characteristics that inhibit criminal behavior, including the ability to forego short-term gains for long-term goals, long-term strategic thinking, and confidence that work will yield long-term life benefits.5 Based on current graduation and arrest rates, it is estimated that a 10 percent increase in high school graduation would reduce auto thefts by 13 percent and murder and assault arrests by 20 percent.6 One study conservatively estimated that a one-percentage point increase in high school completion rates nationwide would save $1.4 billion annually in costs associated with crime.7 Civic Life. Educational attainment has been strongly and consistently correlated with voter participation. In the 2004 election, rates of voting were 16 percent higher for high school graduates than they were for high school dropouts (56 to 40 percent), while those with advanced degrees were more than twice as likely to vote as high school dropouts (84 percent to 40 percent).8 Competitiveness. A report from the National Association of Manufacturers found that 55 percent of American companies express dissatisfaction with their workers’ writing skills.9 Two national studies place the total cost to employers and higher educational institutions at between $17 and $25 billion per year.10 According to Roger Joyce, chair of the board at the Connecticut Business and Industry Association and vice president of engineering at the West Haven-based Bilco Co, many local businesses are now “directly competing with foreign manufacturers… and they’re surpassing us. We’re way behind other countries that we compete with in terms of engineering graduates.”11 Taxes and Spending. One recent study estimated that the nation’s current dropout rate translates into between $58 and $135 billion in lost income tax and Social Security revenues.12 Examining the impact on public expenditures, a Columbia University study estimated that if one third of the nation’s high school drop-outs went on to get a high school education, the savings in public assistance spending alone would total $10.8 billion per year.13 With 47 percent of entering college freshman—even at selective campuses—now requiring at least one remedial course,14 another study that counted the direct and indirect costs of remedial education in just one state, Alabama, estimated the cost at $541 million annually.15 Disparate Impacts More difficult to quantify are the costs created by the wide disparities in the quality of public education provided to students. One thing we do know: while the achievement gap creates significant consequences for all of Connecticut’s citizens, the largest personal costs are paid by poor and minority students. This is especially true in Connecticut, which is home to one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation. In the fourth grade, for example, the difference in academic achievement between poor and non-poor students is 3.3 grade levels in reading, the largest gap of all 50 states, and the gap on the math test is the second largest, behind Illinois. In the eighth grade, Connecticut had the largest gap between poor and non-poor students on the math test (a 3.7 grade level gap) and was tied with Pennsylvania for the largest gap on the reading test (a 2.9 grade level gap).16 Similarly, while 59 percent of whites and 55 percent of affluent students in the tenth grade have the math skills and knowledge expected of students at their grade level, in our urban areas the same is true of just 13 percent of low-income students, 12 percent of Hispanics and nine percent of African Americans.17 This achievement gap’s most immediate impact is on college matriculation and educational attainment rates. Studies show that poor and minority students are not only more likely to have low levels of achievement in high school, as compared to their wealthy and non-minority counterparts, but as a result they are also less likely to enroll in college, less likely to earn a substantial number of college credits, and less likely to finish a bachelor’s degree.18 In Connecticut, 85 percent of white students graduate from high school, compared to 61 percent of African Americans and just 51 percent of Hispanics, according to a 2006 analysis by Education Week.19 A 2003 study by the Manhattan Institute found that only 20 percent of African Americans and just 11 percent of Hispanics graduated from Connecticut high schools with at least the “bare minimum qualifications” necessary for entrance to a four-year college.20 A recent report by Nellie Mae Foundation predicted that as the minority population increases in Connecticut, the percentage of young workers with a Bachelor’s degree will actually decline from 43 percent in 2006 to 40 percent by 2020.21 Considering the strong correlation between low levels of educational attainment and a wide range of social and economic problems, it is not surprising that Connecticut ranks at or near the bottom across a variety of key social and economic indicators. For instance, Connecticut:
In a bleak reminder of the costs of our failing schools, in 2007, for the first time, our state government will spend more on corrections ($611 million) than higher education ($601 million).25 The Bottom Line Closing Connecticut’s achievement gap would produce clear and immediate social and economic gains. For instance, significantly reducing the number of high school dropouts would lessen the need for costly remedial education while boosting the employment rates and earnings of poor and minority youth in our state. In addition, the best research to date suggests a number of longer-term benefits, including: increased job creation, a reduction in economic inequality, a lower crime rate, higher levels of voter participation, reduced fiscal pressures on our local and state government, a smaller tax burden, and a healthier citizenry. No less important are the intangible benefits of greater solidarity, dreams realized, and the restoration of the ideal of equality of opportunity for all our children. While the achievement gap costs Connecticut’s poor and minority communities the most, we all have a stake in ensuring that it is closed. Endnotes 1 “Rankings and Estimates: A Report of School Statistics,” National Education Association, Fall 2005, available at http://www.nea.org/edstats/images/05rankings-update.pdf | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Each year Connecticut spends more than seven billion dollars on its 1,200 K–12 public schools. According to the National Education Association, this level of investment provides for $11,893 in spending per student, the third highest out of 50 states and $3,565 more than the national average. It also pays for a student to teacher ratio of 13.3, the ninth-lowest in the nation. Finally, it makes it possible for our public schools to pay their teachers more than any other state: $58,688 per year, on average.1