
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 27, 1990                   TAG: 9005270302
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-18   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

DROPOUT RATE REMAINS HIGH, OFFICIAL SAYS

Virginia is fortunate to have enough high school graduates to fill its colleges, but the state still confronts an alarming high school dropout rate, a demographer told educators Thursday.

The state's mobile and increasingly ethnically diverse population has stark implications for the state's future education choices, said Center for Demographic Policy director Harold L. Hodgkinson.

"Virginia is one of the few places in the country with a continuous supply of high school graduates . . . but there is at least 26 percent who won't ever go to college, because they drop out of high school," Hodgkinson said at a symposium on demographics and education sponsored by Virginia Tech.

"In a state with all that Virginia has going for it, there ought to be a way to improve that," Hodgkinson said. Virginia's 26 percent dropout rate compares with a national high of 41 percent in Florida and a low of 9 percent in Minnesota, he said.

More than 80 percent of prisoners are high school dropouts, and states with the highest dropout rates also have the highest proportions of prisoners, Hodgkinson said.

Hodgkinson's statistics come from "Virginia: The State and its Educational System," a demographic report commissioned by Virginia Tech.

"Given the fact that a prisoner costs the taxpayer about $20,000 a year while a college student or Head Start participant costs the taxpayer about $3,000 a year, it is clear that a better strategy would be to lower the crime rate by increasing the percentage of young adults who enter adult life with a high school diploma," Hodgkinson's report said.

Despite a declining birth rate, Virginia's population will rise significantly by 2000 because of the huge influx of adults to the state, Hodgkinson said.

Those adults bring children, producing an estimated 21 percent rise in high school graduates by that year, he said.

"We are stressing the relationship between education and economic development," Virginia Tech President James McComas said in an interview.

"Our concern ought to be with the dropout rate. One of the other biggest challenges facing Virginia is the sharp contrasts in the state. It is one of the sharpest in geographic regions of any state in the United States."

"In the last decade, the traditionally black minority has been supplemented by rapid increases in Hispanic, Asian and more recently Middle Eastern people. These populations are locating in many places in Virginia in addition to the Washington suburbs," the report said.

by CNB