The adverse impact that dropping out of school has on both those who drop out and society itself has long been recognized. Multiple studies have shown that dropouts earn less money and are more frequently unemployed than graduates. Dropouts are about three times as likely as high school completers who do not go on to college to be welfare recipients, and about 30 percent of federal and 40 percent of state prison inmates are high school dropouts thus imposing a considerable cost on all levels of government. Given the multiple adverse consequences associated with dropping out, lowering the dropout rate has long been a goal of educators and legislators. The 1968 amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 established local demonstration projects aimed at reducing the dropout rate. From 1969 through 1976, some 30 projects received $46 million in grants from the Department of Education (then the Office of Education) to develop and demonstrate educational practices that showed promise in reducing the numbers of youth who failed to complete their secondary education. The act was amended again in 1974, when funding for dropout prevention efforts was consolidated with funding for other programs, and states were given the discretion to decide what financial support dropout prevention projects would receive through state- administered consolidated grants. In 1988, the Congress created the SDDAP. The program consisted of competitive grants from Education to 89 school districts and community organizations. In fiscal years 1988-1995, SDDAP grantees received nearly $227 million in federal funds. Authorizations and appropriations for the program ended in fiscal year 1995. The School Dropout Assistance Act was passed in 1994 and authorized funding in fiscal years 1995 to 1999, but was never funded. Dropout prevention program funding was subsequently provided in fiscal year 2001 when Education’s Dropout Prevention Demonstration Program received appropriations of $5 million. Although federal funding for dropout prevention programs has been inconsistent, the National Dropout Prevention Center (NDPC) has existed for 15 years and is privately funded. Many of the program officials with whom we spoke said that NDPC was a resource on which they depended for information. This center is housed at Clemson University in South Carolina and offers various resources to those wishing to implement dropout prevention programs. For example, NDPC manages a database that provides program profiles, including contact information, for model programs located throughout the country. In addition, NDPC provides an overview of the 15 strategies it has identified as being the most effective in preventing dropout. NDPC also contracts with school districts and communities to assess and review the dropout prevention programs in the school district and make recommendations for improvement. Much of this information and additional information on annual national conferences and professional development services are available on the center’s website: www.dropoutprevention.org. NCES, part of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement, is the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data on the condition of education in the United States. Since 1989, NCES has annually published data on high school dropout statistics. NCES’ most recent publication provides national level data for three measures—event and status dropout rates and high school completion rates. Periodically, NCES also reports on cohort dropout rates. NCES also reports dropout rates for groups with various characteristics (e.g., sex, ethnicity, age, and recency of immigration). Nationally, dropout rates changed little in the 1990-2000 period. Rates varied considerably, however, depending on the geographic region and ethnic group. The highest dropout rates occurred in the South and West, while the Midwest and Northeast tended to have lower rates. Dropout rates were much higher for Hispanics than for other ethnic groups, affected primarily by the very high dropout rates for Hispanics born outside the United States. Dropout figures also vary depending on which dropout or school completion measure is used, primarily because calculations use different age groups, data, or definitions of dropout. No one measure is appropriate for all situations. Those using dropout or completion data must familiarize themselves with the various measures and select the one that best meets their needs. For the nation as a whole, dropout rates changed little in the 1990-2000 period. Data compiled by NCES indicates that the percentage of 16- through 24-year-olds who were dropouts ranged between 10.9 and 12.5 percent. While the year-to-year results went up in some years and down in others, the net result was a decline of 1.2 percentage points during this time period. Dropout rates show considerable variation when broken down by region or by ethnic group. The highest dropout rates occurred in the South and West, while the lowest rates occurred in the Northeast and Midwest. As figure 2 shows, while the national portion of 16- through 24-year-olds that were dropouts was 10.9 percent in October 2000, the regional average ranged from 12.9 percent in the South to 8.5 percent in the Northeast. Analyzed by ethnic group, dropout rates were higher for Hispanics than for other ethnic groups, as shown in figure 3. For example, in 2000, the Hispanic dropout rate was 27.8 percent compared with 6.9 percent and 13.1 percent for white non-Hispanics and black non-Hispanics, respectively. Asian/Pacific Islanders had the lowest dropout rate, 3.8 percent, in 2000. However, due to the relatively small sample sizes, reliable estimates for Asian/Pacific Islanders could not be calculated before 1998, so they are not shown separately in the trend lines in figure 3. In addition, sample sizes were too small for NCES to calculate dropout rates for American Indians/Alaskan Natives in any year. Further analysis offers additional insight into the high dropout rate for Hispanics. Compared to non-Hispanics in the United States, a much higher percent of Hispanic children were born outside the United States—43.6 percent versus 6.5 percent. The dropout rate for Hispanics born outside the United States was much higher than that for Hispanics born in the United States in 2000 (44.2 percent vs. 15.2 percent). As a result, although Hispanics born outside the country accounted for only 6.6 percent of all 16- through 24-year-olds, they accounted for more than a quarter of all dropouts in 2000 and thus significantly raised the overall Hispanic dropout rate and the national dropout rate. In addition, data from 1995 show that more than half (62.5 percent) of the foreign-born Hispanic youths who were dropouts had never enrolled in a U.S. school, and 79.8 percent of these young adults who had never enrolled in U.S. schools were reported as either speaking English “not well” or “not at all.” The high dropout rates for Hispanics also affect the state differences in high school completion rates. As table 2 shows, the states with the highest rates of high school completion among 18- through 24-year-olds (Alaska, Maine, and North Dakota) have very small percentages of Hispanics, while the states with the lowest rates of high school completion among 18- through 24-year-olds (Arizona, Nevada, and Texas) have very large percentages of Hispanics. Our analysis of the state-by-state information for all 50 states and the District of Columbia shows that two factors— Hispanics as a percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in 1999 and the percentage increase in Hispanics under 18-years-old in the 1990s—account for about 40 percent of the variation in the high school completion rates between states. Analyzing dropout rates is made more complicated by the fact that multiple ways exist to measure the extent of dropping out—and no one measure is ideal for all situations. For example, one way to measure dropouts is to determine the percentage of students that drop out in a single year. This measure is referred to as an event dropout rate. NCES’ event dropout rate measures the number of 15- through 24-year-olds that drop out of grades 10-12 in the past year without completing a high school program. While such a measure can be used to spot dropout trends on a year-to-year basis, it does not provide an overall picture of what portion of young adults are dropouts. If the concern is whether the total population of dropouts is growing, shrinking, or staying about the same, a different measure is needed. Several ways exist to measure the portion of young adults who are dropouts rather than the percentage who drop out in any given year. In one such approach, referred to as the status dropout rate, NCES measures the percentage of all persons from 16- through 24-years-old who are not enrolled in school and have not earned a high school credential, including those who never attended school in the United States. A similar but somewhat different measure is the high school completion rate. NCES’ completion rate measures the percentage of 18- through 24-year-olds who are no longer in school and have a high school diploma or an equivalent credential, including a General Education Development (GED) credential. The status dropout rate and the completion dropout rate differ because they are based on different populations. Only the status dropout rate calculation includes 16- and 17-year-olds and those 18- through 24- year­ olds who are still enrolled in a high school program. Because of these differences, the status dropout rate and the high school completion rate are not the simple inverse of each other. Another approach, called the cohort dropout rate, uses repeated measurements of a single group of students to periodically report on their dropout rate over time.