Acknowledgments

This continues the dropout report series which started with Dropout Rates in the United States: 1988. We would like to start the acknowledgments by recognizing the work of the late Dr. Philip Kaufman, who contributed significantly to the design of and analysis in most of the reports in the series. 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 to 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 Lee Hoffman, Valena Plisko, Bruce Taylor, and John Wirt from NCES; Joanna Wu, Bobbi Kridl, and Patti Gildersleeve at MPR Associates; Darcy Herman of MacroSys Research and Technology; Fumiyo Tao from the Institute of Education Sciences (IES); and several contributors from the Education Statistics Services Institute (ESSI), which is funded by NCES and composed of staff from the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and a number of partner organizations. The authors would like to acknowledge the following individuals from ESSI for their assistance, comments, and guidance: Stacey Bielick, Kristin Flanagan, Stephen Mistler; Sandy Eyster, and Zeyu Xu of AIR; Sarah Grady of MacroSys Research and Technology; and Alexandra Henning from Quality Information Partners (QIP).