Ya Don't Say

I ran across the following headline in a NY Times Article the other day:

"Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts"


Ya don't say. And all this time I figured dropouts were making our society all hunky-dory. It's a good thing lots of money was spent to research this topic.

“We’re trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st century United States,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of researchers that prepared the report. “It’s one of the country’s costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates — it’s scary.”

It is scary. It is even scarier that we continue to build a materialistic society that values the Kardashian's of the world to the tune of many TV shows and millions of dollars, but pays its educators an amount inadequate to live in the communities where they teach. It is even scarier that we shell out millions of dollars in salary to folks who can throw, pitch, toss, dunk, and hit a ball, but complain about $5 copay to see our Doctor.

But I digress - point is, dropouts are bad for the economy and end up in prison at a higher rate. Shocking.