The U.S. News and World Report – Fernando Reimers 
Societies make great efforts to educate students in hopes that this will help them advance themselves and contribute through work, citizenship and service. It was not always the case that most students could attend school, and today many of those who do are not engaged. Lack of engagement leads some students to drop out of school, with high costs to themselves and to their communities. The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates that increasing the high school graduation rate to 90 percent would increase earnings for those graduates by $ 7.2 billion, create 65,150 new jobs, increase state and local tax revenue by $700 million and federal tax revenue by 1.1 billion and increase annual gross domestic product by $11.5 billion. Students are often disengaged because they don’t see the point of what they are learning, they don’t see how it relates to their lives, or to lives they might imagine for themselves. They don’t see the relevance of education to their lives. Perceived irrelevance leads to boredom.(more)