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3.Complexities in Counting
Pages 29-37

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From page 29...
... One is the event dropout rate, the number of students in a particular category who were enrolled but left school without completing the requirements within a specified period of time. The second is the status dropout rate, which indicates the percentage of young people who are of age to be enrolled in or have completed school but are not attending and have not received a diploma.
From page 30...
... Although each rate is useful, the existence of these different ways of counting dropouts is a source of confusion. Press coverage of dropout TABLE 3-1 Methods of Counting High School Dropouts Rate Who Is Counted Comments Event Students in a given grade Difficulty of tracking whereabouts Dropout or in a given age span of students who leave affects Rate who were enrolled and count.
From page 31...
... When dropout rates are used as indicators of the relative success of reforms or other programs, the discrepant numbers can lead to vastly different conclusions. Dropout rates are also an important means of gauging the outcomes for cohorts of students; the needs of students who are incorrectly classified as school completers are likely not to be met.
From page 32...
... could be chosen to avoid counting students who will eventually complete high school, but it would have other disadvantages, most notably that the outcomes for these students would reflect policies 10 or more years in the past. Most important, however, Kaufman explained, is the fact that changes in the wording of survey questions on the CPS that were made early in the 1990s have disrupted the trend line for much of the data produced by the survey.1 Kaufman also discusses several complications in the use of CPS data to report state-level data.
From page 33...
... Nevertheless, if these credentials also have less economic value than traditional diplomas, and possibly other negative implications for students' futures, the inability to distinguish the outcomes for students who receive these credentials from those for other students will be a significant impediment to understanding dropping out and school completion. A further complication was pointed out by workshop discussant David Grissmer, who noted that the CPS does not collect data on those who join the military.
From page 34...
... Smisko also reported that, as has been widely reported elsewhere, dropout rates in Texas have declined both for the student population as a whole and for African American and Hispanic students over the past decade or so. BOX 3-1 Criteria for Identifying Dropouts in the State of Texas • A student who is absent without approved excuse or docu mented transfer and does not return to school by the following year • A student who completes the school year but fails to reenroll the following year • A student who leaves to enter the military before graduation • A student from a special education, ungraded, or alternative education program who leaves school • A student who leaves school and enters a program not quali fying as an elementary/secondary school (e.g., cosmetology school)
From page 35...
... Haney uses data on enrollment in each grade to show the rate at which white, black, and Hispanic students progress from grade to grade. He also examined the proportion of students enrolled in the ninth grade who later graduated on time for successive age cohorts by race.
From page 36...
... Kaufman provides another example of the difficulty in his discussion of similar disputes over dropout rates in California. Noting that differing calculations could rightly leave the public wondering whether the dropout rate was "12 percent and falling or 33 percent and rising," he pointed out some of the practical difficulties that face states, apart from the definitional ones already discussed: Resources are such that many schools cannot track all of their dropouts.
From page 37...
... Recommendation 4: The committee recommends that the U.S. Department of Education provide leadership and oversight to coordinate data collection and establish long-term objectives for collecting district, state, and national data on school completion.


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