High School Drop Outs
Downward Spiral President Obama stated “we… know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma”. I once met a 30-year-old man named Omar from New York; he was a high school dropout. He worked as a trash man trying to pay child support for his nine-year-old son. He told me his one regret was not finishing high school and getting his diploma and how his life would have been so much easier and how many more opportunities he would have had if he had done so. According to CNN, nearly 6.2 million students in the United States dropped out of high school between 2000 and 2007. To make matters worse, the U.S. Department of Education announced that in 2010 1.2 million students had dropped out in one year alone. Whether they’re the brilliant student at the top of the class, the kid who sits in the back of the room wishing to be anywhere but in a classroom listening to a teacher blabber, or any of the millions in between, it is vital that they stay in school. Therefore, students should be required by law to graduate high school. Obtaining a high school diploma is the most important of all. Without it, they can go almost nowhere in life. Dropouts are much more likely than their fellow classmates who did graduate to be unemployed, living in poverty, in prison, receiving public assistance, unhealthy, unhappy, divorced, or single parents with children who will most likely drop out of high school themselves. The U.S Department of Education stated that high school dropouts commit about 75% of the crimes in America. Almost every job they encounter requires them to have a high school diploma. If an employer had the choice of hiring a person with a diploma or a person without a diploma, of course they are going to hire the person with a diploma; they are well educated and skilled. Most jobs require literacy, mathematics, and careful planning. This is why dropouts are only able to acquire minimum wage jobs