School Dropouts

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School Dropouts

Research in this section relates to dropout trends and remedies for improving graduation rates.

The Dropout/Graduation Crisis Among American Indian and Alaska Native Students

This paper examines the graduation/dropout crisis among American Indian and Alaska Native students using data from the National Center for Education Statistics. Data from 2005 is drawn from the seven states with the highest percentage of American Indian and Alaska Native students as well as five states in the Pacific and Northwestern regions of the United States. Findings indicate that the number of American Indians and Alaska Natives who graduate continues to be a matter of urgent concern. On average, less than 50% of Native students in these twelve states graduate each year.

Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis in Texas

The most accurate method for tracking high school graduation rates is to provide each student with a single lifetime school identification number that would follow him or her throughout his or her entire school career. Texas has this system in place, but this report demonstrates that the official rates Texas has historically reported dramatically inflated graduation rates and other extended year measures of high school completion as much or more than most states lacking this capacity.

Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis in California

Every year, across the country, a dangerously high percentage of students -disproportionately poor and minority - disappear from the educational pipeline before graduating from high school. Nationally, only about 68% of all students who enter 9th grade will graduate "on time" with regular diplomas in 12th grade. While the graduation rate for white students is 75%, only approximately half of Black, Latino, and Native American students earn regular diplomas alongside their classmates. Graduation rates are even lower for Black, Latino and Native American males. Yet, because of misleading and inaccurate reporting of dropout and graduation rates, the public remains largely unaware of this educational and civil rights crisis.

Dropouts in the South: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis

The social consequences of this crisis are devastating. The nation loses millions of dollars each year in revenue and taxes because of the high numbers of unemployed and underemployed dropouts. High school dropouts are swelling our nation’s overcrowded prisons, where 68% of inmates have not completed high school. Communities with large numbers of high school dropouts experience overwhelming problems of poverty, incarceration, unemployment, drug abuse and addiction, and intergenerational dependency.

Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis

The report combines findings of a comprehensive review of graduation rate accountability derived from each state’s website, along with interviews of state education officials. Finally, the report provides recommendations on how both the federal government and individual states can act to address this crisis.

The Dropout Crisis in the Northwest: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis in All Communities with Special Focus on American Indian and Alaska Native Students

On May 30, 2008, The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles organized its seventh conference calling attention to our nation's graduation and dropout crisis. "The Dropout Crisis in the Northwest: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis in All Communities with Special Focus on American Indian and Alaskan Native Students" was held for the first time in the Pacific Northwest at the University of Washington in Seattle. The purpose of the conference was to galvanize regional and local efforts to confront the school dropout crisis and to generate an ongoing national conversation about the policy changes needed in order for schools and communities to ensure that every student receives the educational opportunities leading to successful high school graduation and beyond.

Making School Completion Integral to School Purpose & Design

By correlating their values, their instructional, curricular, relational, and professional practices, and their organizational behavior to the assessment process by which students graduate, the Coalition Campus schools make completion integral to their purpose and design.

How Many Central City High Schools Have A Severe Dropout Problem, Where Are They Located, and Who Attends Them? Initial Estimates Using the Common Core of Data

The analysis presented in this paper strongly suggests that about half of the high schools in the nation’s 35 largest cities have severe dropout rates. It further shows that high schools with weak promoting power and by implication high dropout rates are found in almost all of the largest cities but they are particularly concentrated in Midwestern and Northern industrial cities and Texas.

Do Higher State Test Scores in Texas Make for Better High School Outcomes?

It appears that rising TAAS scores on the tenth-grade high-stakes test have had at best a small impact on educational outcomes that count, namely high school completion and the likelihood of attending college. This is particularly troubling because high school graduation rates are relatively low in Texas.

Are Dropout Decisions Related to Safety Concerns, Social Isolation, and Teacher Disparagement?

It is clear that the students who suffer from isolation and threats from peers do not feel supported by teachers. In some cases, perceived teacher disparagement has stronger relationships with these outcomes than peer influences.

Making Do With Less: Interpreting the Evidence from Recent Federal Evaluations of Dropout-Prevention Programs

Policymakers interested in reducing the number of dropouts no doubt would like to hear something they could do for which there is some evidence it will be effective. The pattern of evidence from the impact assessment points to programs that were effective.

Revisiting the Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education: Lessons about Dropout Research and Dropout Prevention Walt Haney

This report suggests that education officials should stop misusing test results find better ways of helping low achieving students besides flunking them and forcing them to repeat the ninth grade.

High School Dropout, Race-Ethnicity, and Social Background from the 1970s to the 1990s

We think that our analysis provides a strong factual basis for discussions about the sources of high school dropout and policies that may affect the future trajectory of dropout. To be sure, we should not rest with analyses that necessarily leave out the all-important factor of academic achievement and that gloss over the more proximate social processes of school leaving.

The National Dropout Data Collection System: Assessing Consistency

Unfortunately, while a great deal of time and resources are being devoted to measuring one educational outcome—the academic achievement of students in school— less is being devoted to measuring the complementary outcome—how many students complete high school.

Career Academy Impacts for Students at High Risk of Dropping Out

During the past five years, education policymakers and practitioners have been pursuing a number of far-reaching strategies aimed specifically at improving high schools. Almost universally, each of these school reform initiatives have included a special, if not a primary focus on schools serving students at high risk of leaving school without the credentials and skills needed to make successful transitions to further education and the labor market.

Dropping Out of High School: The Role of School Organization and Structure

Our results suggest that explanations for students dropping out of school before graduation that rely solely on students’ social background and school behaviors are incomplete. Although our research has demonstrated that both students’ social and academic background are associated with the likelihood of students dropping out of high school, the story does not (and should not) end there. The results of this study suggest that schools can exert important organizational effects on dropping out, above and beyond individual students’ behaviors and backgrounds.

Easing the Transition to High School: An Investigation of Reform Practices to Promote Ninth Grade Success

This study contributes to the literature on school reform and restructuring by providing much needed information about effective school organizational practices to ease the transition to high school. As educational researchers and practitioners work to find the best ways to organize high schools for the benefit of teachers and students alike, more attention must be given to the unique needs of ninth graders as they transition to a new school environment while also facing the challenges of adolescence.

Essential Components of High School Dropout Prevention Reforms

For the most troubled high schools, we argue in favor of a strict adherence to implementing a complete comprehensive reform model of the three key components—organization, instruction, and teacher support—where each component is established with no compromises that would weaken the self-contained Academy structure, the extended time and extra-help courses within a high standards curriculum, or the continuous support of teachers by expert inclass coaches for instructional innovations.

Connecting Entrance and Departure: The Transition to Ninth Grade and High School Dropout

The descriptive data for this urban school system indicate that the modal dropout grade is ninth grade, even though students may have been enrolled in high school for three or even four years. Credit-wise, the largest proportion of dropouts are barely out of the starting gate in high school.

Why Students Drop Out of School and What Can Be Done

Because dropping out is influenced by both individual and institutional factors, intervention strategies can focus on either or both sets of factors. That is, intervention strategies can focus on addressing the individual values, attitudes, and behaviors that are associated with dropping out without attempting to alter the characteristics of families, schools, and communities that may contribute to those individual factors. Many dropout prevention programs pursue such programmatic strategies by providing would-be dropouts with additional resources and supports to help them stay in school.

Dropouts in America: How severe is the problem? 
What do we know about intervention and prevention?

On January 13, 2001, CRP held its first conference on high school dropouts and reform policies to tackle this problem. Co-sponsored with Achieve Inc., it gathered more than 17 experts in the subject and produced 14 commissioned papers. This page summarizes the working papers presented at the conference.

Dropouts in America: Confronting the Graduation Rate Crisis Gary Orfield

Only half of our nation's minority students graduate from high school along with their peers.