The Class Of 2010

With all due pomp and circumstance, and the inevitable dose of tomfoolery, nearly 400 Newtown High School seniors are expected to accept diplomas Thursday evening, just several hours after The Bee goes to press this week. The ceremony always goes a long way toward reconciling whatever residual animosities linger around town from the spring budget battles, which this year rolled right into last week. So we are looking forward to filling our pages next week, and our website this weekend, with photos and reports of this iconic moment of achievement and celebration for the students and their families.

Graduation night is also a time of reckoning for the community, which according to data collected by the Connecticut Department of Education, is currently spending $117,861.92 to educate every high school graduate. Using that calculation, Thursday night is worth more than $47 million, making it the most expensive event any of us are likely to attend — unless, of course, we plan to attend next year’s graduating ceremonies.

According to the Yankee Institute, which compared these cost-per-graduate figures for the state’s 111 school districts, Newtown ranks 30th on the list of districts that deliver a high school diploma with the greatest economy — or turning that equation on its head, 81st on the list of districts who spend the most on their students. This latter list is headed by some very prestigious districts — Greenwich, Westport, and Weston — and some very notorious districts — Hartford and New Haven. Hartford, for example, spends $157,743 per student over the course of their 13-year public school careers. Because only 79.2 percent of those students end up with high school diplomas, Hartford’s cost per graduate is $199,211, outspending even Greenwich, which lays out $179,816 for every graduating senior.

These numbers are interesting in that they demonstrate that any correlation between the money spent on education and the relative success of an educational system must come with plenty of caveats. Graduation rates, test scores, and college admissions help quantify the value of graduation night, and Newtown’s students continue to be a credit to their town in this regard.

Yet every year, when we look at the photos of the graduates in our pages and witness the genuine jubilation when diplomas change hands from the givers to the receivers, we understand again that the calculus of educational success has a component we often overlook. Graduation night marks the tipping point in the development of young minds when they move from always being “receivers” to becoming contributors.

In college, or trade schools, or on the job, interests are forged into callings, and all those dollars spent start to pay dividends. Think back 100 years to the class of 1910, which fought “The Great War” that shaped the modern world and then went on to run the country during the critical years of World War II. Who would ever begrudge the cost of their education?

Every generation has its challenges and its moments of greatness. Looking around the world today, we can see that the Class of 2010 will be asked to contribute far more than the relatively inconsequential amounts we have contributed to date to their education. We wish them well and encourage them to stick around. We’re going to need their contributions.