Shelly DeBerry
West Virginia Department of Education
Office of School Improvement
Student Success Advocate sdeberry@access.k12.wv.us
304-558-3199

“Every school-day in America, 171 school buses loaded with children leave school never to return. That is our daily dropout rate.”
(National Center for Education Statistics, 2004. Dropout Rates in the United States: 2001)
Approximately, 7000 students are expected to dropout of school in
West Virginia this year.
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Education Week Diplomas Count 2010

• In 2006, West Virginia had a teen pregnancy rate of
44.9 per 1,000 teenage girls, which placed the state
16th in the nation.
• Birth rates for young teenagers aged 15–17 declined in 31 states during 2007–2009
• Birth rates increased significantly for only one state from 2007 through 2009, West Virginia, by 17 percent.
NCHS Data Brief ■ No. 58 ■ February 2011

• Teen pregnancies cost the nation about $9.1 billion a year, according to the CDC.
• Other Cost of Dropouts

 Over the course of his or her lifetime, a high school dropout earns, on average, about $260,000 less than a high school graduate.
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 Increasing the graduation rate and college matriculation of male students in the
United States by just 5 percent could lead to combined savings and revenue of almost $8 billion each year by reducing crime-related costs.
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 If the United States‘ likely dropouts from the Class of 2006 had graduated, the nation could have saved more than
$17 billion in Medicaid and expenditures for uninsured health care over the course of those young people‘s lifetimes.
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Correlations with Dropping out of School
 70 % of young women who gave birth within 4 years of starting high school also left before graduating.
 They represent 32.8 % of dropouts ands 18.7% of all student enrolled in school.
 70% of students who had substantiated case of abuse and neglect during the high school years, who had a foster care placement, or who had given birth within four years of starting high school, dropped out in Philadelphia.
(Neild Y Balfanz, 2006)

 Teen girls in the bottom 20% of basic reading and math skills are five times more likely to
become mothers over a two-year high school period than teen girls in the top 20%
 Male and female students with low academic achievement are twice as likely to become parents by their senior year of high school compared to students with high academic achievement.
National Dropout Prevention
Center/Network
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(Reitzi, 2005)
National Dropout Prevention
Center/Network
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