Giving Compass' Take:

• A new report from Arizona found that the state loses $498,920 for each young person who does not attain a high-school diploma. 

• How can philanthropy help students earn high-school diplomas? What programs have been proven effective in helping struggling or returning students?

• Learn how one school in New Mexico is teaching students who were unsuccessful in traditional public schools. 

Across the country, mayors work to improve the economic health of their cities and encourage growth and stability for their communities and their residents. These efforts often include tax breaks for corporations, revitalizing neighborhoods through partnerships with redevelopment agencies, and grants and other initiatives to improve access to safe, affordable housing.

And while these are all very important areas for any municipal leader to address, we should not overlook one that is not always viewed at first glance as in the purview of mayors: education. More specifically, it is critical to focus on helping young people to not only graduate from high school but to do so on time.

In April, the Arizona Mayors Education Roundtable, an initiative of the national nonprofit education research agency WestEd and the Helios Education Foundation, released a report titled "Education Dashboards,"which uses high school non-completion and youth-disconnection rates to calculate the potential economic loss to the state. The report draws on input from each of the Roundtable's 15 mayors as well as data from the Arizona Department of Education and the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

The report found that each young person who does not complete high school on time represents a potential estimated lifetime economic loss of $498,920 for Arizona. This is due to a combination of effects including lost earnings, higher rates of criminal activity, increased reliance on government assistance, poorer health outcomes and lost productivity -- all factors that negatively impact the health of our cities. Based on the state's 18,460 non-completers in the class of 2015, the total estimated loss to the state would exceed $9.2 billion.

Read the full article about high-school graduation rates by Paul Koehler at Governing Magazine.