About 15,000 students drop out of Louisiana public schools each year, and of that number, about 18 percent enter the Department of Corrections, according to a study by the University’s School of Social Work.
The study found the annual weighted cost, on average, for each person being punished within the Department of Corrections was $4,750.
The dropout study is headed by Cecile Guin, director of the Office of Social Service Research and Development, and has been ongoing for more than a year. It aims to make citizens aware of how much money dropouts cost the state and how important it is for students to remain in school and graduate, Guin said.
The dropout study collected data from the Department of Corrections, the Department of Education and the Office of Juvenile Justice from 1996 and later, Guin said. If the number of students dropping out was lowered by 10 percent, the state would save more than $7 million a year from the Department of Corrections, the study found. With that reduction of dropouts, the estimated tax benefits for one year are estimated to be more than $3 million.
“We’re planning on looking at more family variables with children who have dropped out,” Guin said. “We will work with the workforce commission to see what types of employment [dropouts] have.”
Social work professor Pamela Monroe is working on Entergy’s Adopt a School Zone program, which is in its first year with the University. The program is conducted at Istrouma High School in Baton Rouge, but it may expand to include other high schools in the coming year, Monroe said.
“The purpose is to combat poverty by improving retention and graduation rates in high schools,” Monroe said. “We know that there’s such a strong relationship between academic success and exits from poverty.”
The program currently gives free tax preparation and tips to avoid predatory lending to the families of students, Monroe said.
“That’s clearly not something that is of deep concern to high school students. That’s a deep concern to their families and parents,” Monroe said.
The study is important because the researchers say many societal issues are closely related.
“They’re circular problems: poverty, not staying in school, living in unstable neighborhoods, crime. It’s all the same problem,” Guin said.
 
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Contact Shannon Roberts at [email protected]