Every 29 seconds another student gives up on school, resulting in more than one million American high school students who drop out every year. Nearly one-third of all public high school students—and nearly one half of all African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans—fail to graduate from public high school with their class.

There are nearly 2,000 high schools in the U.S. where 40 percent of the typical freshman class leaves school by its senior year

The dropout problem is likely to increase substantially through 2020 unless significant improvements are made

Dropouts are more likely than high school graduates to be unemployed, in poor health, living in poverty, on public assistance, and single parents with children who drop out of high school

Dropouts earn $9,200 less per year than high school graduates and more than $1 million less over a lifetime than college graduates

Dropouts were more than twice as likely as high school graduates to slip into poverty in a single year and three times more likely than college graduates to be unemployed in 2004

Dropouts are more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison as high school graduates

Dropouts are four times less likely to volunteer than college graduates, twice less likely to vote or participate in community projects, and represent only 3 percent of actively engaged citizens in the U.S. today

The government would reap $45 billion in extra tax revenues and reduced costs in public health, crime, and welfare payments if the number of high school dropouts among 20-year olds in the U.S. today, which numbers more than 700,000 individuals, were cut in half