The United States Of Dropouts
Gone are the days when U.S. companies hired locally
The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India. “We’re having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs,” says AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson.
So far, only around 1,400 jobs have been returned to the United States of 5,000. Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50%.
“If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn’t put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down,” he said. Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs.
The Department of Education (DOE) announced Thursday that the Commonwealth’s dropout rate is at an all-time high. The annual dropout rate rose from 3.3% in 2006-2007 to 3.8% this year. Among all students,
9.1% of Hispanic students, 6.4% of African American students, 2.7% of white students and 2.6% of Asian students drop out each year. While Hispanics have the highest population of dropouts within their demographic, white students actually had the most dropouts last year, 51.2% of the total number.
