Acknowledgments

This is the 16th edition of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) annual dropout report. The late Phillip Kaufman, who passed away unexpectedly in 2004, coauthored 13 of the previous reports. His contributions continue to shape these publications. Dr. Kaufman was a senior researcher at MPR Associates, Inc., and a former member of the NCES staff.

The authors would like to recognize the many people and agencies involved in gathering the data analyzed for this report, including the U.S. Census Bureau and respondents of the Current Population Surveys (CPS), staff at NCES involved in the Common Core of Data (CCD) program, and the education professionals at the local and state levels who completed the CCD surveys. The authors are also grateful for the support provided by Stephen Ruffini from the General Educational Development (GED) Testing Service in supplying the data needed for the GED analyses in the report.

The authors would also like to thank Marilyn Seastrom, Valena Plisko, Lee Hoffman, Mike Planty, and Shelley Burns from NCES and Robert Stillwell, Zeyu Xu, and Kevin Bromer from the American Institutes for Research for their helpful comments on drafts of this report.

Several MPR Associates staff also made important contributions to this report. The authors thank Joanna Wu for statistical programming assistance, and Annabelle Yang and Barbara Kridl for their editorial, graphic, and production guidance.