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| EDUCATION: Dropout/Graduation Indicators |
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| 2006 Graduation and Dropout Rates |
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In recent years the atmosphere surrounding public education has changed. With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) a movement towards more accountability has dominated the rhetoric between public officials, educators, and communities. NCLB forced public schools to examine their success in educating young people by a number of different factors. Prior to NCLB, two of the most important factors measuring a schools’ success were graduation rates and dropout rates. In the past it was a common assumption that the high school graduation rates stood constant at about 80%, and while this wasn’t great, most of the public and officials were content with the percentage of children that were obtaining a high school diploma. Recently, however, it has been suggested that graduation rates might not be entirely accurate. It has become apparent that school districts and states have created loopholes that allow for schools to ‘beef-up’ graduation rates in hopes of being recognized by the state and the nation. This problem is occurring all over the United States, but Texas has stood out as having a particularly large list of exemptions that allow schools to report graduation rates somewhat higher than they may actually be.
Due to concern over reporting, fifty governors and twelve national representatives signed an agreement for a common definition of graduation rate in December of 2005. The agreement was prompted by Graduation Counts, a report by the NGA Task Force on State High School Graduation Data. The report emphasizes the need for accurate dropout data and called for policy makers to create a uniform method of tracking dropout rates.
Graduation Rates
CHILDREN AT RISK calculates freshmen to senior graduation rates using a method that is similar to the Manhattan Institute’s graduation calculations. A simple calculation was used comparing the numbers of a freshman class and the numbers of graduating seniors in that school four years later. CHILDREN AT RISK also adjusted for growth to determine simple freshman to senior four year graduation rate. These adjustments help account for the various growth rates in different areas of Houston. Compared to states calculations, this is a more stringent measure of how individual high schools performed in the retention of freshmen through graduation.
After calculating freshmen to senior graduation rates, a more accurate dropout rate can be assessed. One of the most significant reasons for the difference in dropout and graduation rates between TEA and CHILDREN AT RISK is that CHILDREN AT RISK does not count students who have obtained or are in the process of receiving a GED as a graduate. CHILDREN AT RISK also accounts for population changes between the years at schools.
Dropout rates
Texas Education Agency (TEA) maintains educational data for the state of Texas. TEA calculates dropouts as the number of students in grades seven through 12 who dropped out at any time during the school year divided by the number of students in grades seven to 12 who were in attendance at any time during the school year. Texas currently uses leaver codes as a way of tracking why students dropout, although the majority of dropouts leave under the “no reason provided” leaver code. However, Texas is in the process of changing the way it calculates dropout rates.
To comply with the No Child Left Behind Act, Senate Bill 186 was passed in 2003, forcing Texas to change by 2007 the way it reports dropouts in order to conform to the definitions developed by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Revamping the way Texas reports dropout rates will provide a more accurate portrayal of students dropping out of school. Texas will now use the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the U.S. Department of Education’s definition for dropouts. The NCES developed four different rates to present a broad picture of high school dropouts and completers in the United States, with each contributing unique information: the event dropout rate, the status dropout rate, the status completion rate, and the averaged freshman graduation rate. This definition is more stringent than TEA. Additionally, TEA leaver codes have been modified, deleted, or combined to meet the NCES definition of school leavers. For example, under TEA, all students who received a GED were not considered dropouts, however under NCES, students in a GED program who do not graduate by August 31 of their senior year are considered dropouts. Also under NCES, students that are enrolled in school but do not attend the first day of school are considered dropouts. Changing the TEA definitions of dropouts will allow for more accurate reporting of dropout and graduation rates.
TEA Longitudinal Dropout Rate
TEA believes that completion rates are a more accurate measure of school performance than dropout rates. There are four final outcomes that TEA assesses to calculate completion rates: graduation, GED recipients, continuing students, and longitudinal dropouts. Longitudinal dropout rates require tracking a compilation of data on students over a five to seven year period. Then, the dropout rates are calculated by dividing the total number of students in the class by the number of students that drop out. Students who transfer in or out of the class are added or subtracted accordingly. Therefore, longitudinal dropout rates are not generated by grade level. This type of measurement is considered to be more stable over time when compared with annual dropout rate measurements. Districts are not held accountable for dropouts until the fall after their anticipation graduation date; moreover, schools can be held accountable for dropouts years after they have left school.
Longitudinal dropout rates for the Houston area school districts were at 3.8% while the state of Texas averages at 3.9% according to TEA. The state’s graduation rate was 84.6% and Harris County was at 85.3%. Both Texas and Harris County had an average of 4.2% of its students receiving General Educational Development (GED) diplomas. Around 6.9% of student in the Houston Area continued high school after their cohort finished while the state of Texas average was at 7.3%.
When broken down into ethnicities, the Harris County longitudinal dropout rates show that minorities are dropping out at much higher rates than whites. Hispanic students are almost three times as likely to dropout when compared to white students. African American students in Harris County are one and a half times more likely to quit school than their non-minority counterparts. The Asian population had the lowest drop rate at 0.7%.
Attrition rates are another statistic that can describe the amount of students schools are losing over a four-year period of time. The attrition rate measures the number of students not enrolled in grade 12 out of the initial student enrollment for grade nine. Attrition rate does not separate the many reasons students leave school like dropping out, transferring, or graduating early. Attrition rates fluctuate and are not considered indicators of school performance since they are only really estimates.
Attrition does not take growth rates into account. The attrition rates do, however, reflect possible trends in Texas public schools. For example, the highest attrition rates were for economically disadvantaged and minorities. These findings are similar to overall dropout rates as well.
Texas Education Agency’s Annual Dropout Rate
Texas Education Agency (TEA) calculates the annual dropout rates by dividing the number of students in grades seven through 12 who were in attendance at any time during the school year by the number of seventh to 12th grade student who dropped out at any time during the school year. TEA calculates Texas’ annual drop out at 0.9% between 2002 to 2004 for grades seven through 12. Harris County’s dropout rate for the class of 2003 was 0.7% and the class of 2004 was 0.8%. In 2003 to 2004 the student population for Texas grades seven to 12 was 1,924,717, and of that group, 348,486 were from Houston and the surrounding areas. There were 16,434 students dropping out in the state of Texas.
Between 2003 to 2004 the highest dropout rates for grades seventh through 12 in Houston occurred in the Hispanic population at 1.1%. The next highest dropout rate was white students at 0 .8%, followed by dropout rates of .7% for Asian and African American students. Although the White student dropout rate decreased by a small percentage between 2002 to 2004, all other ethnicities increased. The gap in dropout rates between Hispanics and other ethnicities are steadily increasing.
There was an increase in the actual percentage of students dropping out when looking at grades nine through twelve only. Although there was a considerable rise in dropout rates from 2001 to 2002 and 2003 to 2004 across all student groups, Hispanics and economically disadvantaged students had the highest dropout rates. Those students, who were deemed economically disadvantaged, were 52% more likely to quit school than their non-economically disadvantaged counterparts. Furthermore, when examining dropout rates by grade levels, the highest dropout rates occurred in grade nine. There were 4,524 dropouts in ninth grade for the state of Texas in 2003 through 2004. The next highest number of dropouts occurred in tenth grade with 3,717 students followed by 3,542 students leaving in grade 12. The smallest number of dropouts occurred in seventh grade with 436 students. In Texas, there were 9,213 males dropping out compared to 7,221 females dropping out in grades seven through 12.
Texas publishes annual dropout rates in the Academic Excellence Indicator System (AEIS) Reports. Information from this publication is then used to assign school and district accountability ratings from “academically unacceptable” to “exemplary.” The 2005 and 2006 rankings requirements for annual dropout measures were as follows: “academically acceptable” a 1% dropout rate, “recognized” a 0.7% dropout rate, and “exemplary” a 0.5% dropout rate.
Dropping out of high school is related to a number of negative outcomes. For example, the median income in Harris County of high school dropouts age 25 and over was $18,980 in 2004. By comparison, the median income of those 25 and over in Harris County who have completed their education with a high school accreditation (including a General Educational Development certificate) was $23, 918. In addition, 23.6% of the dropout population 25 and over are considered below the poverty line. In terms of health, dropouts over the age of 24 tend to report being in worse health than adults who are not dropouts, regardless of income. Dropouts also make up disproportionately higher percentages of the nation’s prison and death row inmates. Almost 70% of inmates in state prisons are dropouts and more than half of them are on welfare. |
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| POLICY IMPLICATIONS |
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 mandates that public schools, districts, and states report Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in order to receive federal funding. The act allows each state to establish an individual set of criteria to define AYP. Texas’ AYP mandates that school increase their passing standards as well as 70% graduation rates. Because Texas public schools funds from the federal government depend on graduation and dropout rates, reporting actual dropout rates could cause schools to loose funding. Schools that are in low-income areas and have poor graduation rates could lose funding from the federal government.
The way Texas calculated the dropout rate in the past was different than the way the Federal National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the U.S. Department of Education calculated it. There was much debate surrounding the accuracy of the Texas’s calculations. However, in 2003 Senate Bill 186 was ratified by the Texas Legislature, requiring TEA to use the NCES dropout definition. By the 2007, TEA must change over the reporting of their calculations to the NCES definition. Students who receive a GED will no longer be considered as a completer unless that school is registered for evaluation under the alternative accountability procedures. Starting for the class of 2005, only graduates and continuing students will be included in the definition of completers for the accountability system completion rates.
Children are leaving school at an unacceptable rate. It is critical that a school district first adequately assess the profile of their dropout rates, by implementing a transparent dropout methodology, before establishing or continuing a prevention and recovery program. Schools must find better ways of reporting their true dropout numbers without depicting inflated or underreported numbers. These reasons and patterns of children leaving school must be addressed as seriously as academics in order to reach goals for high school completion rates. Without a GED or higher education, dropouts have a difficult time finding jobs, and many jobs they do find offer lower wages. Adolescents who drop out are more likely to live in poverty and three times as likely to be unemployed, underemployed, or working for very low wages. |
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