Facts We Need to Remember

Th Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty provides "20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know". I have selected to highlight two: Education Wage Premium and Incarceration to wake up those who are starting to equate critical thinking, successful entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity to dropping out of school:

Education Wage Premium

Only college graduates have experienced growth in median weekly earnings since 1979 (in real terms). High school dropouts have, by contrast, seen their real median weekly earnings decline by about 22 percent. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Charting the U.S. Labor Market in 2006; see http://www.bls.gov/cps/labor2006/home.htm. Updated to 2009 by Steve Hipple of the Bureau of Labor Statistics; see http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/the-value-of-college-2/

Incarceration

As shown in this graph, a full 37% of those who are both young black males and high school dropouts are now in prison or jail, a rate that's more than three times higher than what prevailed in 1980.Source: Western, Bruce & Becky Pettit (2010). Incarceration and Social Inequality. Daedalus, 139(3), 8-19

What strongly correlates with dropping out of school is not success, but poverty and crime.