Now that our new school year has gotten under way, I hope that our residents will find ways to help us change what is perhaps North Carolina's greatest shortcoming: the failure of about 30 percent of our students to graduate from high school in four years. For students of color the rate is nearly 40 percent.
In addition to lost dreams and wasted talent, dropping out carries a hefty economic price tag. Dropouts are far more likely to be unemployed, poor or in prison. Up to 80 percent of our state's prison inmates are dropouts. A high school graduate earns $9,400 more than a dropout annually, and a college graduate earns nearly $19,000 more.
Our teachers and principals work hard, and we need to help them more. Personal volunteering and mentoring in programs like Communities in Schools can make a big difference.
But one of the things that has made a huge difference is engagement by business to improve schools. IBM and others have helped retirees to become valuable teachers. And I recently learned of an initiative called AT&T Aspire, a commitment of $100 million nationally over four years for high school success and workforce preparedness. Grants from this AT&T program have supported our state's innovative New Schools Project, dropout prevention programs in Haywood and Iredell counties, and job shadowing by 378 students across North Carolina.
All of us are eager to see the recession end and jobs come back. But in the years ahead these jobs will be directly in competition with Singapore, Japan and China -- where Gov. Beverly Perdue will be traveling soon to recruit new companies and jobs to North Carolina.
Those companies won't be hiring dropouts.
Let's all pitch in and cut our dropout rate by at least one half in the next decade.
James B. Hunt Jr. was governor of North Carolina from 1977-1985 and from 1993-2001.
