(HOST) Across the country high school graduates are poised to accept diplomas in ceremonies honoring their achievements, but one recent graduation ceremony here in Vermont was especially moving to free lance writer, teacher and commentator Mary McCallum.

(McCALLUM) On April 14 the Community High School of Vermont awarded its 1,000th high school diploma at a graduation in the state's newest prison in Springfield. I am an educator there.

The high school's nearly 365 students don't attend classes at one central campus, but at 17 locations across the state. This nearly invisible school is in 9 sprawling prisons, and 8 small street sites in Vermont towns. Inmates behind bars and some out on probation or conditional release take our classes.

Our target audience, mandated by the Vermont legislature, is incarcerated youths under age 23 without high school diplomas. Our immediate goal is simple: help them earn one. Our teachers are dedicated. Full time teachers are certified, and graduation is a joyful event.

This graduation day the visiting room was decorated with blue and yellow streamers and was packed with inmates' families, staff, security, press and state officials. Six nervous graduates, ages 18 to 24, sat in the front row in blue caps and gowns while speakers praised their persistence. Near the end each graduate stood and spoke. One called it a - quote - pretty big day, and thanked his parents for believing in him.

For these students graduation day represents more than a step up the educational ladder. It's a metaphor for the new found ability to complete something. Some are men and women in their forties who finally earn diplomas after years of substance abuse, poor work histories, and failed hopes.

Studies indicate that someone with a high school diploma can earn $300,000 more over a working lifetime than a dropout. We teachers tell our students this to get their attention, but perhaps the most pressing reason for our young people to get their diplomas is reflected in the statistic that high school dropouts are more likely to end up in prison.

In a country that houses 2.3 million inmates, 68% are high school dropouts. Financial costs are astronomical, but the social price is also great: broken families, children without parents, people out of the workforce supported by the government, and an economy based on the business of locking people up. The financial burden falls on all of us: taxpayers, fractured communities, and state budgets. Getting a diploma may actually help a student from our program stay out of prison in the future.

Officials have called our school the brightest spot in the corrections budget, yet it's an appropriation most Vermonters know little or nothing about. And now, with government belt tightening, full funding may be in jeopardy. But our graduates will tell you that it's money well spent.

One 24 year-old graduate entered the program to prove he wasn't - quote - just a criminal. Now he's planning to go on to college. Another man close to graduating says, "It's pretty much my last chance to make something of myself."

Not every teacher gets to work in a school of second chances. And giving that second chance to Vermont's population behind bars is one of the best investments I can imagine.