Help Children And Youth Achieve Their Potential

United Way of Citrus County is focusing on two long-term education goals that advance the common good by ensuring that

1.Young children are safe, healthy, nurtured and prepared to succeed in kindergarten; and
2. Youth graduate high school on time.

We could make the economic argument: more education leads to higher wages and is critical for financial stability and independence. There is strong evidence that higher levels of education are linked to higher incomes, less unemployment, less poverty, and less reliance on public assistance.

But education is about more than better jobs and bigger paychecks, important though they are in making families and individuals more financially stable. More education is also linked to better physical and mental health, longer lives, fewer crimes, less incarceration, more voting, greater tolerance, and brighter prospects for the next generation. More education is good for individuals who stay in school to earn their high school degree or who enter and graduate college, AND it is also good for all of us, paying big dividends in the form of increased civic engagement, greater neighborhood safety, and a healthy, vibrant democracy.
 

The Common Good Forecaster, a joint product of United Way and the American Human Development Project, takes a closer look at ten factors and makes the case for why education matters to each of these critical areas.

•Life expectancy: On average, the more education people have, the longer they live.

•Low birth weight: Infants born to less-educated mothers are more likely to have low birth     weight, which is associated with developmental delays and infant death.

•Murder: A one-year increase in the average level of schooling in a community is associated with a 30 percent decrease in the murder rate.

•Obesity: Obesity has increased among all Americans, yet the more educated are less likely to be overweight or obese.

•Income: The median annual earnings of Americans 25 and over who did not complete high school are less than $18,500, while those who completed high school typically earn early $26,000. College graduates earn $44,000 annually, and those with graduate or professional degrees typically earn $57,500.

•Poverty: Education is the single most important factor in the determination of a person’s poverty status: almost 24 percent of the adult population without a high school diploma is poor, compared to 11 percent of those who are high school graduates and only 3.6 percent of college graduates.

•Unemployment: The less education a person has, the more likely he or she is to be unemployed. A high school dropout is four times more likely to be unemployed than a college graduate.

•Children’s reading proficiency: Among eighth graders whose parents have less than a high school education, 13 percent read proficiently (beyond a basic level), compared with 42 percent of their classmates whose parents have a college degree.

•Voting: In the 2004 presidential election, those with a college degree were 50 percent more likely to vote than high school graduates, and two and a half times more likely to vote than high school dropouts.

•Incarceration: Nearly three-quarters of state inmates did not complete high school; fewer than three percent completed college or more.

The Common Good Forecaster shows that if all adults in Citrus County moved up one education level (those without high school would graduate, those with a high school degree would get some college and those with some college would earn a four-year diploma),  life expectancy here would increase by 1.7 years, Citrus County’s murder rate would drop by almost half, median individual earnings would go up over $7,000, the poverty rate would drop by almost one third, and the percentage of people who vote would jump from 64 percent to 74 percent.

United Way of Citrus County is committed to cut in half the number of high school dropouts in the next 10 years. To be successful, we have to start long before school does. We know high school dropouts are more than 12 years in the making. They usually start school behind, and unfortunately most never catch up. Tackling high school dropout rates means reversing these grim statistics:

•46 percent of children start school without the literacy, social, emotional and intellectual skills they need to succeed.

•67 percent of fourth-graders cannot read proficiently.

•25 percent of high school students fail to graduate on time.

•15 percent of young adults are neither working nor attending school.

That’s why the entire education span — from birth through 21 — must be in our focus if we are to improve high school graduation rates.

Learn more by visiting Common Good Forecaster. Look at Florida, and focus in on Citrus County. Play with the sliders and see what happens. Also chose the preset scenarios under the sliders to see the effects of education on health, financial stability, and civic participation.