Who's Minding the Neighborhood? The Role of Adult Capacity in Keeping Young People on a Path to Graduation. Research Brief
Author: America's Promise Alliance, Center for Promise
Date: 2016-00-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Academic Persistence,Dropouts,Student Attrition,Hypothesis Testing,Intervention,Adults,Census Figures,Community Involvement,Metropolitan Areas,Gender Differences,Socioeconomic Influences,Geographic Location,Dropout Rate,Program Effectiveness,Databases,Elementary Secondary Education,Teacher Student Ratio,Statistical Analysis,Age Differences,Racial Differences,African Americans,Whites,Hispanic Americans,Role Models,High School Graduates,Graduation Rate,Neighborhoods

This brief is based on an econometric study conducted in 2016 by Thomas Malone and Dr. Jonathan Zaff. The nation's high school graduation rate has been rising over the past decade and is now at a historic high. As of 2014, however, four percent of all 16- to 19-year-olds in the United States--a total of 690,000 young people--had left high school without graduating. On a hopeful note, the current four percent rate represents a noticeable decline from 40 years ago, when approximately fourteen percent of young people did not graduate high school with their peers. This study examines: (1) changes in the rate of young people leaving high school without graduating throughout the United States; (2) variations in the rate of youth leaving between states, within states, and within cities; and (3) the effect of adult-to-youth ratios on the changes in the rate of youth leaving school in metropolitan areas throughout the United States. To conduct the analyses of the relationship between adult-to-youth ratios and the rate of youth leaving high school, the authors integrated three different datasets: (1) Geolytics, Inc. Neighborhood Change Database (NCBD), which allowed the authors to examine a dataset of 16,269 zip codes within areas defined as &quot;metropolitan,&quot; defined as having a core urban area of at least 50,000 people; (2) Business Master Files (BMF) from the National Center of Charitable Statistics, which tracks the number of nonprofits in the United States and their financial activity. These data provide a zip code-level approximation of youth-focused nonprofits; and (3) Common Core of Data from the National Center of Educational Statistics at the United States Department of Education, which provides the data for the student-to-teacher ratio in neighborhood schools. The authors conducted an econometric analysis to investigate the effect of the adult-to-youth ratio within communities on the improving rates of young people who left school before graduating over the last four decades. In addition to the ratio, the authors accounted for the effect of the number of youth-oriented nonprofits in the community, the student-to-teacher ratio for schools within the neighborhood, mean neighborhood income, percentage of adults with at least a college degree, racial composition of the neighborhood, and neighborhood population. The analysis also accounts for between-city differences and historical changes. This research brief gives an overview of the study and discusses the findings, conclusions, and implications of the study. A list of questions and considerations for policy and practice is included. Contains endnotes. [For the full report, see ED572736.]