• Introduction
• Major Findings

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) began collecting the counts of public school dropouts through the Common Core of Data (CCD) with the 1991-92 school year. A dropout was defined, in simplified terms, as an individual who had been enrolled at any time during the previous school year, was not enrolled at the beginning of the current school year, and had not graduated or transferred to another public or private school.

The CCD is a voluntary collection, and dropout statistics are published for only those states whose dropout counts conform to the CCD definition. Dropout data were reported for 12 states for 1991-92. By 1997-98, this number had increased to 37.

Since 1993, the CCD dropout statistics have been reported in the NCES annual publication Dropout Rates in the United States in conjunction with statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The current report focuses solely on CCD data and introduces a high school 4-year completion rate based upon dropout and completion statistics. The 4-year completion rate is the proportion of students who leave school from the 9th through 12th grades who do so as completers. It is relatively unaffected by net enrollment loss or gain due to population changes or by double-counting students who are retained in a grade during the high school years. Unlike the high school completion rate reported from the CPS, which is based on all 18- to 24-year-olds, the CCD 4-year completion rate is limited to public school data from grades 9 through 12 over 4 years (figure A). The CCD rate thus excludes some persons reported through the CPS who completed high school or who received a GED-based equivalency credential in their twenties, as well as those who graduated from nonpublic schools. It should be stressed that this report does not include all states; the statistics are valid for those states reporting but may not be nationally representative.

Figure A.—Example of how the CCD public high school 4-year completion rate is calculated

Some of the major findings from the analysis of public high school dropout and 4-year completion rate data are the following:

• Between 1993-94 and 1997-98 (years in which the numbers of reporting states were similar), the high school dropout rates were between 4 percent and 7 percent in almost two-thirds of the reporting states (table A).
• White and Asian/Pacific Islander students were less likely to drop out than were American Indian/Alaska Native, Black, or Hispanic students. Approximately one-third of all reporting states reported dropout rates of 10 percent or higher for Black students in each year from 1993-94 through 1997-98. Slightly less than one-half of the states had similar dropout rates for Hispanic students in this time period.
• Students were more likely to drop out of high school in districts that served large or midsize cities than in rural districts for those states reporting. When relatively low dropout rates are examined, 1997-98 data highlight this difference. In that year, the average high school dropout rate was less than 4 percent in rural districts in 16 of 37 reporting states. In contrast, none of the 21 reporting states with large city districts reported a dropout rate of less than 4 percent in large city districts..
• High school 4-year completion rates were 80 percent or higher in 20 of 33 reporting states in 1997-98 (table B). (This rate does not reflect those receiving a GED-based equivalency credential.)
• The average 4-year completion rate was less than 60 percent for American Indian/Alaska Native students in nine reporting states, Hispanic students in six reporting states, and Black students in six reporting states in 1997-98 (table C).
• In every reporting state except Alabama, Maine, and West Virginia, the 4-year completion rate was higher for Asian/Pacific Islander students than for the other minority groups in 1997-98.

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