<p>I live in a very mixed community when it comes to income level, race, nationality, educational level. If you walk the main drag of our “downtown”, you see the teens “hanging out”. I can tell you with one quick look that these kids are not the ones in the college prep courses of the high school. They are usually smoking cigarettes and look rather unsavory. A lot of them do end up in the substance abuse programs. It may be because they are caught more.</p>
<p>Having had one kid who like to hang with the risky crowd, I can tell you that the problem is everywhere and crosses the income brackets. But every single kid in my kids’ graduating class (college prep private school) went to a college full time after high school with some gap years, but no longer that a one year break. That is not the case in many of the high schools. It is not unusual that a number of those kids are in institutions that are not of higher learning, like jail or other behavior programs, on a full time basis. Or they are home doing nothing. </p>
<p>A friend from the past visited last week who lives in an area where about a third of the kids go to college from high school. The number of them married at age 20 is shocking to me. Many not married but with kids. Not a one in that situation from my kids’ crowds. </p>
<p>Now some of these kids have gotten into trouble with the law, with drugs, with behavior, with mood disorders. However, the coping mechanism seems to occur along with college not instead of it. These stats are consistent in the US.</p>