Dropouts

Calculating Dropout Rates

Accurately estimating dropout rates is difficult for three reasons. One source of confusion is the definition of dropout used. In order to track students, school districts develop codes for describing those who are no longer attending classes. In addition to “dropout,” other codes may be “lost—not coming to school,” “needed at home,” “married,” or “cannot adjust.” Not all of a district's codes are included in the calculation of its dropout rate, and the codes that are included may vary from district to district, and state to state. Additionally, mandatory attendance laws typically require school attendance until age 16 years. Thus, students who leave school before turning 16 are defined as truants, not dropouts.

A second source of confusion is the use of different formulas to calculate dropout rates. Dropout rates are determined in three ways:

• 1.
  Event rate—the proportion of students in a given age range (e.g., 15 to 24 years) who leave school in a single school year
• 2.
  Status rate—the proportion of a given age range who have not graduated from high school and are not currently attending school, regardless of when they left
• 3.
  Cohort rate—the number of students in a specific grade that drop out over time

In addition to dropout rates, graduation rates are also calculated. The graduation rate is the proportion of a given age range who have earned either a high school diploma or a General Education Development (GED) credential. These different calculations provide different estimates of the number of students who drop out of school.

Finally, the reliability of dropout rates is brought into question because of inaccurate reporting. According to Fossey (1996), embarrassment about their dropout rates, along with pressure from school boards and administrators, may lead school districts to cover up the true number of students who leave each year. He contends that some school districts “may unconsciously be engaging in triage,” getting rid of those students with the most severe needs—discipline problems, and learning and emotional difficulties—“to spend more energy on those believed more likely to succeed” (p. 143). This variability in defining dropout and calculating the dropout rate, along with the possibility of inaccurately reported data, makes both understanding the dropout problem and developing prevention programs difficult.

Dropout Rates

Despite limitations in determining actual dropout rates, sufficient evidence exists to demonstrate a significant problem. Looking at national event dropout rates, 4.8% of 15-to-24-year-old students in grades 10 through 12 left school between October 1999 and October 2000. The status dropout rate—the number of 16-to-24-year-old persons either not enrolled in school or without a high school diploma—in October 2000, was 10.9%. During the 1970s and 1980s both of these dropout rates showed downward trends, from 6.1% in 1972 to 4.1% in 1987 for the event rate, and from 14.6% in 1972 to 12.7% in 1987 for the status rate. Since the late 1980s, both rates have remained relatively stable (Kaufman & colleagues, 2001).

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