1 in 10 American High Schools are "Dropout factories"

No school is proud of the title: "Dropout Factory." This not so great honor is bestowed upon high schools with a 60% dropout rate, and 1 in 10 High Schools in America have been awarded this title. Thats about 1,700 schools nationwide. The highest dropout rates where in large cities and "high-poverty" rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most of these "dropout factory" schools have high minority populations too.

Utah is the only state without a single dropout factory and Florida and South Carolina have the highest percentage of them. This statistic is particularly troubling for people like Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina department of Education. Mr. Foster is quick to point out that a couple of years ago a high school dropout could get a good job in a local textile mill, but now those jobs have gone. So what are these children meant to do???

This new dropout statistic comes from study at Johns Hopkins University. This study was fairly compressive and looked at the senior classes for three years in a row. This was to make sure that local events, such as plant closures (and thus people rapidly moving out of a town).