Philip Kaufman and Martha Naomi Alt, MPR Associates, Inc. Christopher D. Chapman, National Center for Education Statistics November 2004 Issue Brief: Educational Attainment of High School Dropouts 8 Years Later
National Center for Education Statistics
November 2004
NCES produced both of these reports, both examining dropouts. In the first, data from 2001 are compared to data dating as far back as 1972, over which time there has been very slight improvement, i.e. lessening of dropout rates. What's most interesting is that this report offers four distinct measures. The "event dropout rate" measures the percentage of students leaving high school each year without a diploma (5.0 percent in 2001, down from 6.1 percent in 1972), while the "status dropout rate" is the percentage of 16 to 24 year-olds not in school and without a diploma (10.7 percent, down from about 14.6 percent). The status completion rate computes the percentage of 18 to 24 year-olds who have a diploma (86.5 percent, up from 82.8 percent), while the 4-year completion rate measures the percentage of 9th graders who left school with a diploma four years later. (State data range from 65.0 to 90.1 percent.) Adding to the confusing is the fact that the first three of these gauges are based on the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) while the last is based on NCES's Common Core of Data (self-reported by states); thus the first three capture public and private school students, while the last captures public only. Readers must also beware that the CPS data counts GED recipients among those with diplomas. The authors warn that such GED data are unreliable, but even if they were robust, Jay Greene and Marcus Winters have demonstrated that equating a GED to a diploma is unwarranted. (Read this, which presents their own dropout calculus, based on a version of the "4 year completion" method.) Overall, there is a wealth of information here for dropout-junkies - which is both a strength and weakness - and it's clear that better data are needed. It's also clear that there has been modest but insufficient improvement over the past thirty years. The NCES Issues Brief is more straightforward, as it simply reports in three pages on the progress of the "21 percent of 1998 eighth-graders who had dropped out of high school at least once" between 1988 and 1994. By the latter date, 43 percent of them had earned a diploma or GED and, by 2000, 63 percent had done so. Unfortunately, most such students received GEDs with few earning actual diplomas. Still, 43 percent of those one-time dropouts eventually enrolled in a postsecondary school of some sort, meaning that dropping out does not necessarily end one's education progress. You can find these reports here and here.
