Public School Graduates and Dropouts from the Common Core of Data: School Year 2007-08. First Look. NCES 2010-341
Author: Stillwell, Robert
Date: 2010-06-00
Type: Numerical/Quantitative Data
Subjects: Graduation,Graduation Rate,High Schools,Elementary Secondary Education,Geographic Location,Public Schools,Dropouts,Dropout Rate,Race,Ethnicity,Sex,American Indian Education,Pacific Islanders,Asian American Students,Data,Educational Indicators,Tables (Data)

This report presents the number of high school graduates, the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), and the dropout data for grades 9 through 12 for public schools in school year 2007-08. The counts of graduates, dropouts, and enrollments by grade are from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) nonfiscal surveys of public elementary/secondary education. The data for this collection were reported to NCES through the U. S. Department of Education's ED&quot;Facts&quot; data collection system by state education agencies (SEAs). Although data from six sequential school years are presented in tables 3 and 7, only comparisons between the 2007-08 and 2006-07 school years are presented in the text. This report includes counts of high school graduates for school year 2007-08 for 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Data for high school graduates were missing from CCD reports for South Carolina, the Bureau of Indian Education, the U.S. Department of Defense domestic and overseas dependents schools, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam. Graduate counts were reported by race/ethnicity for 48 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Delaware did not report graduate counts by race/ethnicity. The AFGR could not be calculated by race/ethnicity for Nevada as enrollments by race/ethnicity were not reported for the 2004-05 school year. This report includes 2007-08 school year dropout data for 49 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The high frequency of missing data resulted in the suppression of dropout counts from Vermont. The reported dropout counts for Puerto Rico produced unrealistically low dropout rates and were therefore suppressed (see Appendix A for more details). The Bureau of Indian Education, the Department of Defense domestic and overseas dependents schools, American Samoa, the Northern Marianas, and Guam did not report dropouts. Selected findings include: (1) Across the United States, excluding South Carolina, a total of 2,965,286 public school students received a high school diploma in 2007-08, resulting in an Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR) of 74.9 percent; (2) Across all reporting states, the Averaged Freshmen Graduation Rate (AFGR) was highest for Asian/Pacific Islander students (91.4 percent); (3) A comparison of data from 2007-08 to data from the prior school year, 2006-07, shows a percentage point or greater increase in the Averaged Freshmen Graduation Rate (AFGR) for 16 states and the District of Columbia; (4) There were 613,379 dropouts from high school (grades 9 through 12) with an overall event dropout rate of 4.1 percent across all 49 reporting states and the District of Columbia in 2007-08; (5) Across all reporting states, the dropout rates increased as grade level increased; (6) Across all 47 states that were able to report high school dropouts by race/ethnicity the dropout rate was lowest for Asian/Pacific Islanders at 2.4 percent; (7) Comparisons between high school dropout rates in the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years could be made for 48 states and the District of Columbia; and (8) Across the 47 states that were able to report high school dropouts by gender, the dropout rate was higher for males than for females at 4.6 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively. Methodology and Technical Notes is appended. (Contains 8 tables and 7 footnotes.)