The Down Staircase

The economic and social prospects for young people who don't finish high school are increasingly bleak.

Americans have long thought of education as the engine of economic growth and the purveyor of opportunity. But in the school year that just ended, an estimated 1.2 million teenagers fell by the wayside, failing to earn that most basic of education credentials: a high school diploma.

Without that passport, young people face bleak prospects, economically and socially.

In an increasingly competitive global economy, their chances of earning a living wage are grim. In 2003, high school graduates earned, on average, 34 percent more than those without a high school diploma. College graduates made a...