May 16, 2012
Contact: Mike Bento
bentom@cisnet.org

Washington, D.C. – Communities In Schools, the nation’s leading organization dedicated to empowering students to stay in school and achieve in life, today released the results of an economic impact study. The study was conducted by EMSI, one of the nation’s leading economic modeling firms.

The economic model was based on a subset of results from a recent five-year longitudinal national evaluation conducted by another independent research firm, ICF International. That evaluation concluded:

• Communities In Schools is unique in having a substantively important effect on both reducing dropout rates and increasing on-time graduation rates.
• Communities In Schools’ intensive case management services produce the strongest reduction in dropout rates of any existing fully scaled dropout prevention program that has been rigorously evaluated.
• The Communities In Schools model is effective across states, school settings, grade levels and student ethnicities.

“This analysis of the Communities In Schools model reminds us that the nation’s students are its best investment, and the best economic stimulus is a high school diploma,” said Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia. “The return on investment that Communities In Schools generates is one that any private sector investor would snap up in a minute.”

Using the dropout and graduation results from the ICF school-level study, and basing their calculations only on those Communities In Schools affiliates working in high schools*, EMSI calculated the costs of the organization, including dollars directly invested and the opportunity costs of labor and capital. They then calculated the benefits of the increased high school graduation rates attributed to Communities In Schools and the subsequent higher earnings by these graduates, and social and taxpayer savings based on the students’ increased academic achievement. 

Among the significant findings of the study are:

• The average annual rate of return to society is 18.4%.
• The benefit/cost ratio is 11.6, which means that every dollar invested in Communities In Schools creates $11.60 of economic benefit for the community. 
• High school graduates will be net contributors to their communities for an average of 44 years of their working life, using their increased income to purchase homes and cars, and paying taxes that will support police officers, firefighters and teachers. 
   

“Our analysis demonstrates that Communities In Schools produces meaningful economic and social impacts,” said Tim Nadreau, research economist at EMSI. “The Communities In Schools model produces lifetime benefits for students who will earn more, businesses who will have access to a more skilled workforce, and taxpayers who will have both a greater contribution and reduced costs from these graduates.”

“Communities In Schools is proud to be a leader in the emerging field of rigorous return-on-investment studies,” said Dan Cardinali, president of Communities In Schools. “As we continue to build our own evidence base, we look forward to working with other leaders in the sector to refine and perfect ROI calculation, as it can be both a powerful management tool for nonprofits and a strategic investment guide for donors.” 

A copy of the full study is available in our website’s publications section here.

* The sites that solely serve elementary and middle schools still generate benefits, but because of data limitations those impacts are not captured here.  By limiting the analysis to the most rigorous and defensible results available from the third-party evaluation, EMSI took the most conservative approach to this analysis to avoid overstating the impacts.

About Communities In Schools
Communities In Schools surrounds students with a community of support, empowering them to stay in school and achieve in life. Through a school-based coordinator, Communities In Schools connects students and their families to critical community resources, tailored to local needs. Working in more than 3,400 schools, in the most challenged communities in 25 states and the District of Columbia, Communities In Schools serves nearly 1.3 million young people and their families every year. It has become the nation's leading dropout prevention organization, and the only one proven to both increase on-time graduation rates and reduce dropout rates.

About EMSI
Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. (EMSI) provides high-quality employment data and economic analysis via web tools and custom reports. The company also produces comprehensive impact analyses for colleges and universities in the U.S. and internationally.  EMSI started conducting economic impact studies in 2000 (under the name CCbenefits) to show the economic contribution of higher education. Today they are a company of roughly 40 people based in Moscow, Idaho, who have become well-known for their work with labor market data.  EMSI is dedicated to delivering this data to their clients through handy tools and reports.
Visit their website at www.economicmodeling.com.