America is in the throes of a dropout crisis — one that affects men, blacks and Hispanics particularly hard, according to many recent studies.

President Barack Obama has appeared in a number of public service videos encouraging students to stay in school and suggesting the nation's high number of dropouts can lead to economic disaster for the country. In August, Gov. Bill Richardson called for a statewide effort to get 10,000 dropouts to return to high school by January 2011, the end of his term.

The state's Public Education Department estimates that of all New Mexico students who entered the ninth grade in 2004, only 60 percent graduated four years later, in 2008. In Santa Fe, roughly just 45 percent of students who entered the ninth grade in 2006 graduated from Capital High School last year. At Santa Fe High, the figure was about 61 percent. In general, more males than females drop out, and more students leave school in the ninth grade than later on.

Yet having a high school diploma is a "critical step for avoiding poverty," according to a report by Northeastern University and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, published earlier this year. "The costs of dropping out of high school today are substantial and have risen over time, especially for young men, who find it almost impossible to earn an adequate income to take care of themselves and their families," the study says.

Lynn Vanderlinden, director of assessment and accountability for Santa Fe Public Schools, agrees that a high school diploma is still a necessity for economic and career achievement. "I spent 20 years in the private sector before I came to work in the public schools," she said. "And I did a lot of hires and fires. And even for a gofer-type job, driving around, for instance, if I had to choose between a kid with a high school diploma and a kid with a GED, I always hired the high school diploma, because I knew he could finish."

Every student who drops out has his or her own reason — not fitting in, getting pregnant, landing a desired job, among them — and the consequences may not seem so dire when it's relatively easy to earn a GED (General Educational Development) degree.

But interviews with three Santa Feans who made the decision to leave high school before graduating suggest that, while dropping out is an easy choice to make, it's not one without consequences.

Their reasons for leaving school vary. For "Colin," who does not want his last name revealed for fear it will embarrass his family, drugs and drinking were more attractive than the "Three R's" of reading, writing, and arithmetic. For Julie Dalness — who, according to The New Mexican archives, was an honor student at Santa Fe High School — dropping out offered an alternative to trying to fit in. And for Valerie Griego, dropping out meant escaping an environment in which she was just not comfortable.

All three have received their GED degrees. One clearly doesn't regret her decision to drop out; the other two are still evaluating it. And while one has clearly overcome any stigma attached to not finishing high school, all three have had their fair share of life's challenges since the last day they walked through high school hallways.


Colin

Colin recently turned 18. He left Santa Fe High School when he was in the 10th grade, right before Halloween. He calls himself an "on-the-edge student who did decent in the classroom but never did homework." By his own account, he wanted to trade in his textbooks for pot, pills and alcohol.

Things have been both bad and good since. The bad came first. A month after leaving school, he participated in the robbery of a liquor store and got caught. The judge offered him a deal: a detox program that Colin accepted and now terms "dreadful."

"The counselor said I had serious substance abuse problems," he said. "I kept denying it until the very end, and then I said, 'Yeah, I do.' "

Another round of court appearances led to another opportunity to avoid detention: 22 weeks at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell and the chance to earn a GED degree.

"I got my GED on June 13, 2009," Colin said. "The day I graduated military school, I felt reborn." Recruiters at the institute have tried to talk him into a military career, and he's considering joining the Army as a nurse or mechanic.

He admits that dropping out of school led, briefly, to dropping out of society. He didn't have a job and made friends from "the wrong side of town." Still, no one could have stopped him from leaving high school, he said.

"My parents tried to talk me out of it. My good friends said, 'Don't do it.' My bad friends said, 'Come on, do it, it's easy. We'll party.' It seems like at least 10 people I knew dropped out when I did."

He recalls the actual dropout experience as being painless. "It was pretty simple. I just had to return my textbooks and get some teachers to sign off." While one or two of his teachers urged him to rethink his decision, "I had my mind set on it. I still don't regret it," he said.

Still, if he came across someone who was in that same mind-set today, Colin said he'd urge them to be patient.

"If you're gonna drop out, and don't have a plan, don't do it," he said. "If you have a plan, that may be different. Still, I'd tell them to wait until the end of the year, to think it over, to get their GED and a job."

He's proud of the personal goals he's met since graduating from military school, including landing a job in a restaurant and staying sober.

"I'm kind of going along with life now," he said of his future plans. "If something runs into me, or I run into it, I'll go with it."


Julie

"There was always something pushing me in a different direction," Julie Dalness, 21, explained of her decision to leave Santa Fe High in 2004, when she was a sophomore. "It didn't just happen on a whim; it just seems like it did. Something bigger than me said, 'Drop out of high school.' "

She valued her individuality and felt like she was changing to mesh into the high school crowd. She didn't fit in socially anyway: She was an overachiever.

"Nobody tried to talk me out of it. I needed teachers' signatures on a form; they signed it. My parents were supportive. They said, 'If you feel this is right, do it,' but I had no idea what I was getting into."

Since leaving high school, her life has been "here, there, all over the place." She got her GED and then attended the Santa Fe Community College on a lottery scholarship, taking basic college preparatory classes. Even there, she was lost.

"I didn't have a set mentor or a guidance counselor. There was no real individual to ask, 'What's Julie's experience?' It was more like, 'OK, we have this 16-year-old, let's set up a basic general education and you're good to go! Get your books, get to class on time, next!' "

She left SFCC before completing a degree. She's worked odd jobs since then, and still isn't comfortable with the role education plays — or should play — in her life.

"In this day and age, we are expected to step up to our game. Get our GED, study, move forward. ... So if I had a degree from SFCC and was working a nice job, would I say it was OK? I don't know. I somehow don't feel 'by the book' and presentable on paper."

Does she regret dropping out?

"At this current second? No. Because I trust that everything and anything that I've been through is a lesson. I have to learn from it. But there was a year of my life where I had this deep, deep regret."

And her advice to a would-be dropout today?

"I believe in those cheerleader-type slogans, 'Just say no,' and 'Stay in school,' but I still remember the sign, 'March to the beat of your own drum,' hanging on the wall in my chemistry class," she said, emphasizing the conflict within her.

"My advice? Ask yourself, 'Why are you doing this?' Go to the mountains for a day and sit by yourself. Be silent. Maybe all I needed was to sit with myself in silence."

She tried studying at the New Mexico Academy of Healing Arts earlier this year. She's since left. She said she needs to heal herself before healing others, and she acknowledges there were personal problems that were pushing her to run without contemplating why she was running.

Despite her claim that she doesn't regret dropping out, she admitted that "I made it harder than I had to. I'm facing issues that I have to deal with now based on that choice."


Valerie

Valerie Griego dropped out of Capital High School in the mid-1990s when she was in the 11th grade. This was in the days before cell phones, the Internet and Facebook. Shortly thereafter she became a single mother of two children. You might think she was mixing up a recipe for personal failure at the time.

Not so. She got her GED degree, took classes at Santa Fe Community College — where she now works in the marketing and public relations department — and is studying accounting for her bachelor's degree through the University of Phoenix.

"I continue to set and meet more goals for myself," she said. "I've always been a hard worker, and I can't say dropping out led to anything bad."

She made her decision all those years back because she felt like her peers weren't up to her level of maturity. One day in the autumn of her junior year, she decided to leave. "I just said, 'I'm outta here, I'm going to drop out.' " Her mother was the only one who tried to talk her out of it, she recalled, though one school counselor, John Gallegos, inspired her by urging her to get her GED degree and continue some form of schooling.

"A GED is equivalent to a high school diploma. You just don't graduate with the rest of your class or have the cap-and-gown ceremony," she said.

Nobody gave her grief about her decision. She has never felt it has held her back. It's just possible that high school isn't quite the right fit for every student, she said.

Any regrets? No, she said, and then, flashing a broad smile, "Maybe. In a sort of way, I wish I had graduated with my friends at that high school, but other than that, I've come far, I think."

She's aware of the extreme dropout rates around the state, and believes parental involvement can make all the difference. "I just think young students have so much more to handle today, and a lot of this (dropout rate) has to do with parenting. You need advice and influence from your parents."

Despite defending her decision to drop out, she would be devastated if either of her teen children told her they wanted to do the same today.

"That would be a big issue for me. I tell them all the time how important an education is in this world. My mother was right about that."

And if she were to mentor a teen girl who was contemplating leaving high school now, Griego knows what she would tell her:

"Do not drop out."

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.

By the numbers:

6.2 million: Number of dropouts in the U.S. between the ages of 16 and 24 (2007)

$400,000: Difference between working lifetime earnings of a high school graduate and a dropout

27.5 percent of Latinos 16 to 24 are dropouts (2007)


Source: "Left Behind in America: The Nation's Dropout Crisis," a report by the Center for Labor Market Statistics at Northeastern University in Boston and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, May 2009