The state data dovetails with a recent report from the Dalio Foundation, in partnership with Boston Consulting Group, which found one in five young people in the state were either at risk of not graduating high school or had dropped out and were not employed or engaged in a workforce program. The report also said that one in three high schoolers — or 56,000 statewide — were at risk of not graduating in 2022.
Education officials and nonprofit service providers said the state legislature, the business community, and even voters are needed to help fix a statewide crisis of children and young adults who are considered at-risk or disconnected.
The premise of a Dalio Education report that found that 119,000 young adults in Connecticut who are at-risk of not graduating from high school or are disconnected from post-secondary education or employment, is that when more people know about the crisis, then more people will care, and more people will act.
Connecticut employers have 90,000 open jobs, and at the same time, the state has 12,000 young adults who’ve dropped out of high school and are unemployed or — in many cases — unemployable, speakers said at a roundtable talk Tuesday evening on disconnected youth.