The Expense Tied to Secondary Course Failure: The case of Ontario

Abstract

This article describes a study that examined the volume of secondary course failure and its direct budget impact on Ontario’s K–12 public education system. The study employed a straightforward, descriptive accounting method to estimate the annual expenditure tied to secondary course failure, taking into account some factors known to be systemically related (e.g., grade level, subject area, additional services received). Other studies have used secondary dropouts as the measure of failure and estimated the private or public costs; this study focused on the direct budget impact of secondary course failures on districts and the school system. In the 2008–2009 year, there were approximately 5,082,543 secondary course attempts across 70 school boards in Ontario: 4,682,535 were completed successfully (passed) and 400,008 were unsuccessfully completed (failed). I estimated the total level of expenditure tied to failure for Ontario’s public education system to be $472,729,698, or 7.7% of total instructional and operational spending. My findings point to practical applications that could help district and system leaders in their work to drive positive educational outcomes. I also provide a methodological framework for thinking about levels of expenditure tied to secondary course failure at the system and school board levels. Currently no such framework exists in the public realm.