School is cool! Don't become a statistic!

I recently came across some interesting facts while reading an article about high school dropouts which prompted me to investigate further. Since I didn't want to bombard you with too many facts, I turned some of the data into graphs. Please take a look!

Did you know?

• Each year over 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States.

• Students who don't read proficiently by the 3rd grade are 4 times more likely to drop out of school.
  

• While males roughly made up half of the 16- to 24-year-old age group in 2013, they made up 54 percent of the dropouts.

• The percentage of graduating Latino students has significantly increased. In 2010, 71.4% received their diploma vs. 61.4% in 2006.

• Asian-American and white students are still far more likely to graduate than Latino & African-American students.

• Almost 2,000 high schools across the U.S. graduate less than 60% of their students.

• These “dropout factories” account for over 50% of the students who leave school every year.

• 1 in 3 minority students (32%) attend a dropout factory, compared to 8% of white students.

Earnings and Unemployment Rates by Educational Attainment 2014

Education attained	Unemployment rate (%)	Median weekly earnings
Doctoral degree	2.1	$1591
Professional degree	1.9	$1639
Master's degree	2.8	$1326
Bachelor's degree	3.5	$1101
Associate's degree	4.5	$792
Some college	6.0	$741
High school diploma	6.0	$668
High school dropout	9.0	$488

• A high school dropout will earn $200,000 less than a high school graduate over his/her lifetime. And almost a million dollars less than a college graduate.

• 90% of high school dropouts are on welfare.

• High school dropouts exact an economic toll on society. Each year's class of dropouts will cost the country over $200 billion during their lifetimes in lost earnings and unrealized tax revenue.

Be smart! Graduate!

Help!

I would like to start a library literacy program with teen volunteers who are willing to partner with elementary school students who need to improve their reading and comprehension skills. Please contact me, if you are interested in volunteering and making a difference in your community! This is your chance to prevent future high school students from becoming dropouts and to change the statistics! Not to mention that it also looks good on college applications... ;) 

Sources

Graphs: 

Child Trends Data Bank. (2014). High School Dropout Rates. In Indicators. Retrieved from

http://www.childtrends.org/?indicators=high-school-dropout-rates
Facts:
DoSomething.Org . (2015). 11 Facts About High School Dropouts. In Facts. Retrieved from
https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-high-school-dropout-rates
National Dropout Prevention Center . (2015). Economic Impacts of Dropouts. In Statistics.
Retrieved from http://www.dropoutprevention.org/statistics/quick-facts/economic-impactsdropouts

More tech stuff

Some of you are likely going to take the SAT sometime in the future. Start preparing by answering the Question of the Day on a regular basis. You can find the official SAT Question of the Day by going to sat.org/qotd, by following @SATQuestion on Twitter, or by downloading the free app for your iPhone or iPad. There are hints and explanations for each question and a tally of how many students answered correctly. 

Responsible digital citizenship is important when you are online - not only to keep you safe, but also to protect others' rights.
I searched the web for a great infographic of the dos and don'ts of how to conduct yourself online. The following, in my opinion, is a great example. The site is British, so you might be unfamiliar with some of the spelling, but the content is well worth reading! 
(The site gives permission to use the inforgraphic. Remember copyright laws!) Click here or on the picture to get to the website and the actual infographic.

Teen Tech Week March 8-14

In honor of Teen Tech Week, I’d like to share some free online tools with you that I find very useful. I made sure to only include websites that don’t require you to register and create a user name and password. I hate it when you have to do that! Who can keep track of all that info anyway?

So here is the first one. If you don’t have Photoshop or Paintshop, try Fotoflexer.

It is a great image editor that will let you do almost everything the commercial products will. You can even clone yourself by copying a “region” of a photo. There are various filters, fonts, stickers, layers, distortion effects, and collage options to choose from. You can also draw or doodle over your picture, or resize it. The editor is quite impressive. Try it out! If you need a little help getting started, there is a demo video.

Should you ever be in need of a background removal tool for a picture, I can recommend FreeBackGroundRemoval. I've tried a few other removal tools, but this one seems to work the best and results are instant, not by email.

Try an Hour of Code! Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries in over 30 languages.
It is a one-hour introduction to computer science meant to demystify code and show that anybody can learn the basics. Check out the tutorials and learn about the basics of coding, JavaScript, phone apps, or games.

Most of you are probably familiar with Wordle, but do you know Tagxedo? Tagxedo creates word clouds in a variety of visually stunning shapes you can choose from. It is highly versatile as font, theme, color, orientation, shape, and frequency of individual words can be customized. Check out the examples I made through automatically importing text by simply entering the address of this blog. Of course, you don't have to use random text, but you can customize your words. 

 Stay tuned for more tech related stuff this week!