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Dropout Rates in the United States: 1994
Footnotes
1. Standard errors for all tables and figures are provided in appendix A.
2. The statistical significance of these comparisons was assessed with student's t-test with a Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. For a full discussion of the statistical methods used in this report, see appendix B. While this year's event rate appears to be higher than the rates observed in recent years, the observed difference is most likely due to changes in Census methodology and does not represent a significant increase. For a detailed discussion in changes in CPS methodology, see appendix B.
3. While this year's status rate appears to be higher than the rates observed in recent years, the observed difference is most likely due to changes in Census methodology and does not represent a significant increase.
4. The statistical significance of the trends presented in this section was assessed using weighted least squares regression. For a full discussion of the statistical methods used in this report, see appendix B.
5. These findings are consistent with analyses reported by G. Natriello, A.M. Pallas, and E.L. McDill, Taking Stock: Renewing our Research Agenda on the Causes and Consequences of Dropping Out, in School Dropouts: Patterns and Policies, ed. G. Natriello (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1989):168178.
6. The erratic nature of the Hispanic status rate reflects, in part, the small sample size of Hispanics in the CPS. However, the finding of a higher dropout rate for Hispanics, compared with blacks and whites, is consistent with previous research reported by G.H. Brown, N.L. Rose, S.T. Hill, and M.A. Olivas, in the Condition of Education for Hispanic Americans, U.S. Department of Education (1980), as well as by R. W. Rumberger in Dropping Out of High School: The Influence of Race, Sex, and Family Background, American Educational Research Journal20 (1983): 199220.
7. Unfortunately, there are no available data for Hispanics on school enrollment status in the United States; thus it may be the case that a number of Hispanics in the 1624 age range come to the United States for employment and never enter the U.S. education system.
8. The patterns observed among non-Hispanics are consistent with the report that students are more likely to drop out after reaching grade nine. See E.L. McDill, G. Natriello, and A.M. Pallas, A Population at Risk: Potential Consequences of Tougher School Standards for Student Dropouts, in School Dropouts: Patterns and Policies, ed. G. Natriello (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1989): 168178.
9. The patterns observed in the dropout rates by income levels are consistent with previous analyses of dropout rates among young adults from varying socioeconomic levels. See R.B. Eckstrom, M.E. Goertz, J.M. Pollack, and D.A. Rock, Who Drops Out of High School and Why? Findings from a National Study, in School Dropouts: Patterns and Policies, ed G. Natriello (New York: Teachers College Press, 1989): 5269; R.D. Mare, Social Background and School Continuation Decisions, Journal of the American Statistical Association75 (1980): 295305; J. Combs and W.W. Cooley, Dropouts in High School and After School, American Educational Research Journal5 (1986): 343364; and R.W. Rumberger, American Educational Research Journal20 (1983): 199220.
10. These findings are corroborated in research reported by G. Stice and R.B. Eckstrom, High School Attrition, Research Bulletin, No RB-64-53 (Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service, 1964); R.B. Eckstrom, M.E. Goertz, J.M. Pollack, and D.A. Rock, in School Dropouts: Patterns and Policies: 5269; and R. Calitri, Minority Secondary Education in New York(New York, NY: Aspiria of New York, Inc., 1983).
11. This section of the analysis is based on the fully expanded cohort of eighth graders. This sample includes students excluded in the base year sample, whose sex, race, and dropout status were determined through the Followback Study of Excluded Students.
12. A completion date of August 1992 was chosen so as to be consistent with the definition of high school completion used by the Common Core of Data and the Current Population Survey.
13. See M. Frase, Dropout Rates in the United States: 1988, NCES 89-609, for a full discussion of the cohort dropout rate from the High School and Beyond study.
14. Previous analyses of HS&B data from the spring 1982 followup counted students who had enrolled in alternative programs to prepare for a high school equivalency test or who had completed high school by an alternative means as dropouts. See S.M. Barro and A. Kolstad, Who Drops Out of High School? Findings from High School and Beyond(1987); and A. Pallas, School Dropouts in the United States, Issue Paper, U.S. Department of Education, Center for Education Statistics (1987). The analysis presented here treats them as students or completers.
15. In both HS&B and NELS:88, a subset of students who were not considered capable of completing the questionnaire were deemed ineligible for participation in the study. Inasmuch as no attempt was made to identify and include data from students deemed ineligible in the 1980 HS&B cohort, analyses that compare NELS:88 sophomores with HS&B sophomores do not include data reflecting the experiences of the ineligible students in NELS:88. The option for the school coordinators to determine some students ineligible led to the exclusion of an unknown number of language minority (LM) and limited English proficient (LEP) students in HS&B. In NELS:88 however, a Spanish language questionnaire was administered to those members of the sophomore cohort who preferred to take this version of the questionnaire.
16. Analyses of earlier data from HS&B and from the National Longitudinal SurveyLabor Force Experience in Youth Cohort (NLSYouth) provide additional evidence of the role of school-related problems, work decisions, and family status in students' decisions to leave school early. See, for example, D. Mann, Can We Help Dropouts? Thinking About the Undoable, in School Dropouts: Patterns and Policies, ed. G. Natriello (New York, NY: Teachers College Press, 1989): 319; G.G. Wehlage and R.R. Rutter, in School Dropouts: Patterns and Policies, 7088; R.W. Rumberger, American Educational Research Journal20 (1983): 199220; R.W. Rumberger, High School Dropouts: A Review of Issues and Evidence, Review of Educational Research57 (1987): 107121; and S.M. Barro and A. Kolstad, Who Drops Out of High School: Findings from High School and Beyond, U.S. Department of Education, Center for Education Statistics (1987).
17. Since students identified all reasons contributing to their dropout decision, changes in the percentage reporting an individual item or any group of items does not necessarily reflect a change in the dropout rates. More than likely the increases here reflect that individual students report more reasons as contributing factors.
18. An event graduation rate compares the number of students who graduate at the end of a school year (or the following summer) to the number of students potentially eligible to graduate at the start of the year. Data from the NCES 1993-94 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) show an event graduation rate of 93 percent for seniors in the spring of 1993. A cohort graduation rate compares the number of students who graduate to the number of students present at the start of the study. Data from NELS:88 expanded cohort show that 80.9 percent of the eighth-grade cohort graduated by the summer of 1992, and an additional 2.5 percent completed an alternative program, for a 1992 cohort completion rate of 83.4 percent.
19. The sample sizes of the numbers of completers at the state level are, by definition, substantially smaller than the counts of completers supporting the national estimates (but appreciably larger than the counts of dropouts). To improve the stability of the state level estimates for high school completion rates, the rates are displayed as three year moving averages (for example, the data for 1990 represent the average of the data from 1989, 1990, and 1991 and the data for 1993 are based on averages of data from 1992, 1993, and 1994).
20. For a review of this research see A. Pallas, Schooling in the Course of Human Lives: The Social Context of Education and the Transition to Adulthood in Industrial Society, Review of Educational Research20 (Winter, 1993).
21. See M.M. Marini, Age and Sequencing Norms in the Transition to Adulthood, Social Forces63, (1984) for a critique of the utility of social norms in discussing adult pathways.
22. R.R. Rindfuss, C.G. Swicegood, and R.A. Rosenfeld, Disorder in the Life Course: How Common and Does it Matter? American Sociological Review94 (1987).
23. The analysis in this section of the report is based on the third follow-up survey data from NELS:88. The third follow-up subsampled the full sample from earlier NELS:88 base year and follow-up surveys. Young people who were ineligible for all waves of the survey were not sampled. Therefore the estimates reported here are slightly different than those based on the fully expanded sample of students used in the previous section.
24. Pallas (1993) calls attention to our lack of good information on the racial-ethnic and social class differences in patterns in the life course.
25. Males are slightly more likely to receive an alternative credential, but this result is not statistically significant.
26. In NELS:88, a subset of students who were not considered capable of completing the questionnaire were deemed ineligible for participation in the study. The option for the school coordinators to determine some students ineligible led to the exclusion of an unknown number of language minority (LM) and limited English proficient (LEP) students in HS&B. In NELS:88 however, a Spanish language questionnaire was administered in 1990 to those participants who preferred to take this version of the questionnaire.
27. These figures refer to enrollment of high school graduates in October following their high school graduation. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Condition of Education 1994, Indicator 9.
28. Postsecondary enrollment includes enrollment in degree granting programs, certificate programs, and programs not leading to a certificate or degree.
29. L. Quinn and M. Haberman, Are GED Certificate Holders Ready for Postsecondary Education? Metropolitan Education, and S.V. Cameron and J.J. Heckman, The Non-Equivalence of High School Equivalents, Journal of Labor Economics11(1): 1-47 (1993).
30. W.N. Grubb, J. Kalman, M. Castello, C. Brown, and D. Bradby, Readin',Writin', and 'Rithmetic One More Time: The Role of Remediation in Vocational Education and Job Training Programs, National Center for Research in Vocational Education, September 1991.
31. J. Tuma and S. Geis, Educational Attainment of 1980 High School Sophomores by 1992, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, (March 1995); U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, College Persistence and Degree Attainment for the 1980 High School Graduates: Hazards for Transfers, Stopouts, and Part-timers(Washington DC, 1989).
32. With the exception of Asians.
33. D. Stern and Y. Nakata, Paid Employment among U.S. College Undergraduates, Journal of Higher Education62 (1) (1991).
34. L. Horn and C. Maw, Undergraduates Who Work While Enrolled in Postsecondary Education: 1989-90. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, September 1994.
35. GED recipients also appear to be more likely than graduates to either be unemployed or not in the labor force. However, due to relatively small sample sizes these differences are not statistically significant.
36. Due to these similarities in employment status and sample size considerations, young adults in these three groups are combined in the following analyses.
37. There are not enough cases for Asian young adults without regular high school diplomas to yield stable estimates for socioeconomic group comparisons. Nor are there enough cases for high socioeconomic status youth without regular high school diplomas to yield stable estimates for race-ethnicity group comparisons.
38. For a comprehensive review of this literature see T. Smith, Who Values the GED?: Economic and Sociological Perspectives on Why Dropouts Get the GED and Why the State Supports It. Working series paper, National Center for Education Statistics (1995).
39. These relationships between student characteristics, earnings, and completion status are quite complex and should be interpreted with cautionespecially since the view is only of former students not currently enrolled in school.
40. A. Pallas, The Determinants of High School Dropout. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Johns Hopkins University (1986); D. Hogan, Transitions and Social Change: The Early Lives of American Men.New York: Academic (1981).
41. M. M. Marin, W. Chan, and J. Raymond, Consequences of the Process of Transition to Adulthood for Adult Economic Well Being. In R.G. Corwin ed. Research in the Sociology of Education and Socialization, Greenwich CT: JAI, 1987.
42. R.R. Rindfuss, C.G. Swicegood, and R.A. Rosenfeld, Disorder in the Life Course: How Common and Does it Matter? American Sociological Review94 (1987).
[Appendix C: Table 12]
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