Cause/ Effect Essay

Kosuke Shiraiwa
Writing 625

High School Dropout

             In the United States, the rate of high school dropout is getting lower little by little. The rate which was 15.0% in 1970 reached 8.7% in 2008. The status dropout rates in America are divided into three races; 4.8% for White, 9.9% for Black, and 18.3% for Hispanic. However, you can know this number is still very high when it’s compared with Japan. Because America has various races, the situation is different from Japan, though. In Japan, the rate of high school dropout is 2.3%. Even 2.3% is told the social problem in Japan because it’s still very high rate. According to researches, high school dropout can result from academic, monetary, and social factors.
             Recent research indicates one of the causes as high school dropouts comes from academic factor. Mainly it is about study. When the students can’t catch up with their class, they drop out of their high school. Some students encounter the difficulties about study. For example, they cannot get enough score on important test. Of course, teachers try to support students in many schools to prevent their dropouts. However, some schools actually don’t attempt to improve the situation so hard. It can be improved by both students and teachers. Also if they cannot get enough units to graduate in three years as usual, they are likely to choose dropout, rather than choose studying to repeat one more year. This seems to happen to lower-level school more than upper-level school.
             The second cause occurs from social factor. First of all, if their income is low, they may not be able to pay their tuition. In this sense, students can’t do anything basically. If students try to earn to pay money to support their family, they lose time to study. It leads academic issue eventually. Student also leaves school because of trouble for interpersonal relationship. As one of the example, here is a bully. Some students lose a position in school by being left out of a group, for example. Furthermore, family issue, such as pregnancy and early marriage, can be one of cause to drop out high school. As a result of pregnancy and early marriage, they can’t attend class any more. This factor is very serious currently because it depends on students whether they deal with well.
             These two factors increase high school dropouts; consequently, following two effects come up. It is an increase of people who get fewer opportunities in employment and criminal. Besides, the research reveals that the less high school dropouts are, the fewer criminals are, too.
             If a student drops out of his high school through halfway, he will have very hard time to get a job. It’s because currently a high school diploma is becoming a prerequisite for a number of entry-level jobs. Moreover, if you are even planning to go to college or university, you need to have a high school diploma first. Therefore, you can know that a high school diploma is very important as a standard. Even though two people have similar ability, a person who has dropped out of school is more likely to be unemployed than a high school graduate. They are not believed well unfortunately. If they are able to find work, it will be relatively low paying and offer little opportunity for promotion. They are more likely to be fired than graduates. Moreover, they will still have hard time even after they get a job. In this way, when they can’t have opportunity to earn enough money to live or nurture their family, some problem will certainly happen.
             According to statistics, three-quarters of inmates in state prison in the United States are high school dropouts. In the case of inmates serving time in federal institutions, the percentage is 59 percent. More than half of criminal are the person who dropped out of school. An individual who didn't finish high school is 3.5 times more likely to be arrested at some point during their lifetime. Therefore, you may be able to say that increase of high school dropouts makes more criminal. The researches indicate the rate of criminal was 0.041% and dropout was10.9% in 2000. Otherwise, in 2008 both of rates decreased, then the rate of criminal was 0.038 and dropout was 8.0%. Of course, the rate of dropouts is not all factors to decide the rate of criminal. However, it seems to be correct that a high school dropout affects the rate of criminal.
             As you can see, high school dropouts lead some serious issues to society. Hence, the rate of high school dropouts should be improved as soon as possible. If this situation is improved and the rate of high school dropouts, the country can save money very well because the country has to spend much money and time to search, arrest, and incarcerate criminals. If the overall graduation rate for high school students were to increase by only one percent, it would result in a $1.4 billion savings in the cost of keeping offenders incarcerated. Also, it will prevent bad cycle of life; for example, broken family and too much debt led by low payment or unemployment. In order to improve it, students themselves who seem to drop out of a high school and people who surround them have to consider this situation more seriously. They don’t realize that they will be the person who leads such a devastating life by dropout of high school. These days, though the situation is getting better little by little, it is still in poor shape. Improvement of high school dropouts is good for not only student themselves, but also whole society.