Special Analysis 2007

High School Coursetaking

Table SA-9. Percentage distribution of high school graduates, by type of English course completed: Selected years, 1982–2004

				Advanced academic level¹
Year	No English²	Low academic level³	Regular English (no low or honors) courses	Total	Less than 50 percent of courses	50–74 percent of courses	75–100 percent of courses

1982	0.1	10.0	76.7	13.3	6.1	3.3	3.8
1987	0.7	22.1	55.6	21.5	7.9	5.0	8.7
1990	0.6	19.6	60.2	19.6	7.0	3.6	9.1
1992	0.2	18.0	57.3	24.4	7.6	5.8	11.1
1994	0.8	17.6	56.5	25.1	7.7	5.4	12.0
1998	0.9	13.7	56.1	29.3	9.1	7.7	12.4
2000	0.7	10.7	54.7	33.9	11.6	7.2	15.1
2004	0.7	10.8	55.9	32.7	9.2	7.6	15.9

¹Includes graduates who completed a general English course classified as “below grade level” if they completed a greater percentage of “honors” courses than “below grade level” courses.
²Indicates that student transcript records did not list any recognized English courses; however, these graduates may have studied some English. If graduates took only English as a second language (ESL) courses for credit, they would be listed in this category.
³Low academic level courses include all general English courses classified as “below grade level.” Graduates may have taken a general English course classified as regular or “honors” and be classified in the low academic level if the percentage of “below grade level” courses completed was the plurality of courses completed.
NOTE: For each graduate, the percentages of completed courses classified as “below level,” “at grade level,” and “honors” were calculated. (Not all graduates completed 4 years of English.) After the percentage of graduates at each level had been calculated, the percentage of graduates who fit the category requirement for each level was determined, as explained in supplemental note 12. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, High School and Beyond Longitudinal Study of 1980 Sophomores, “First Follow-up” (HS&B:80/82); National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988, “High School Transcript Study” (NELS:88/92); Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002/04), “High School Transcript Study”; and National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1987, 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2000 High School Transcript Studies (HSTS).

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