For business, this means a lack of high-skilled employees, fewer entrepreneurs, and poorer markets. For communities, this cumulates the risk of civic breakdown. In economic progress, as in strategic security, education is truly America s first line of defense. In other words, the career and employment prospects for dropouts are dismal. Those who do not complete high school face difficulties in making successful steps in other transitions to adult life.
Dropouts have among the lowest voting rates and among the lowest levels of participation.
Lack of informed, citizens is dangerous to the American prospect. According to the United States Census Bureau, Hispanics are projected to become the largest ethnic minority in the United States by the early twenty-first century. Dropouts diminish our democracy, our society, and their own opportunities. This counters the assumption of many who argue that Latinos are not really very interested in finishing school. The Census reports that because of demographic growth there will be at least one million more elementary students many of them Hispanic in our schools by the end of the decade.