Study Exposes Severity of School Dropout Problem

A new study of high school graduation rates reveals that one in four U.S. students (26 percent) did not finish high school in 1998, with the rates soaring to almost two out of four for blacks (44 percent) and Latinos (46 percent).

Failure rates were even higher in many urban school districts, with almost three out of four students (72 percent) in Cleveland, Ohio, quitting school without a high school diploma.

When a participant in a March 2001 education conference in Washington, DC asked why so little attention was paid the alarmingly high dropout rate among African-Americans and why the U.S. Department of Education (DoEd) reported incomplete and even inaccurate dropout statistics, an aide to President George W. Bush responded: "The truth hurts, and few people want to share the truth about underperforming students these days."

Kaleem Caire, president and CEO of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), recalled that episode in explaining why BAEO decided to commission a study, "High School Graduation Rates in the United States."

The results of that study now are in, and they indicate how official dropout numbers paint a picture far rosier than reality. BAEO's study exposes in shocking detail just how abysmal graduation rates are in some major American cities, particularly for black and Latino students.

Only 74 Percent Graduate

The study's author, Manhattan Institute scholar Jay P. Greene, computed a national graduation rate for the class of 1998 of 74 percent. That is significantly lower than the national high school completion rate of 86 percent reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), an arm of the federal DoEd. Recently, NCES reported the 2001 graduation rate had inched up to 86.5 percent.

Why the gap between the BAEO and NCES figures?

Greene explained the NCES numbers are inflated partly because the federal agency counts persons who receive General Educational Development (GED) or other alternative certificates as full high school graduates, even though they acquire those certificates after quitting high school. In addition, a GED does not require the same levels of exertion and knowledge to acquire as a high school diploma, nor does a GED command the same value as a real diploma in the job market.

Furthermore, the NCES data are flawed because they rely on self-reporting of educational status. Since that requires people to admit they are high school dropouts, the procedure likely results in a serious undercount of dropouts.

Greene calculated graduation rates by a method both simpler and more likely to depict the true successes or failures of public school systems. He identified the 1993 eighth-grade enrollments for each jurisdiction and for each racial/ethnic group. He then collected data on the number of regular high school diplomas awarded in 1998 when those students should have been graduating. He also adjusted the data to account for students moving into or out of an area during that five-year period.

The most revealing findings were the wide disparities among major urban areas, states, and racial/ethnic groups.

Five of the nation's 50 largest school districts had graduation rates below 50 percent. Cleveland was unchallenged for the cellar, with only 28 percent of its students completing high school. Cities with the next lowest graduation rates were Memphis (42 percent), Milwaukee (43 percent), Columbus (45 percent), and Chicago (47 percent).

Blacks Fare Worst in Cleveland and Milwaukee

Cleveland also had the lowest graduation rate among African-Americans (29 percent) and Latinos (26 percent). Milwaukee had the second lowest black graduation rate (34 percent).

"Reviewing the findings of this report--including the horrific graduation rates in such cities as Cleveland and Milwaukee--it is no wonder why parents there have led the fight for education vouchers and other new educational options for their children," Caire commented.

"America is not a land of equal educational opportunity for economically disadvantaged students, and these findings show us the consequences," commented John Boehner, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

"Children who do not earn a high school diploma, much less a college degree, will have a much more difficult time achieving the American dream," he continued. "Fundamental changes are needed in our public education system to increase accountability and give new options to parents with children in schools that refuse to change."

The U.S. Supreme Court has accepted for review the question of the constitutionality of Cleveland's publicly funded vouchers, which have enabled 4,000 children to escape the failing public schools for private-sector alternatives.

The large school districts with the highest graduation rates were Fairfax County, Virginia (87 percent), Montgomery County, Maryland (85 percent), Albuquerque, New Mexico (83 percent), Boston (82 percent), Jordan, Utah (80 percent), and Virginia Beach, Virginia (80 percent).

A look at state-by-state data was not flattering to Georgia, which had the lowest overall graduation rate in the country, at 57 percent, followed by Tennessee (59 percent), and Mississippi and the District of Columbia, tied at 60 percent. Georgia and Tennessee were also among the states where fewer than half of black students graduated.

Anomalies in Wisconsin and Minnesota

But the BAEO study unearthed an intriguing anomaly: Some of the states with the best overall graduation rates had some of the worst rates for African-Americans. Even though Wisconsin had the second-best overall graduation rate (87 percent), it had the worst graduation rate for African-Americans (40 percent). Similarly, Minnesota had the second-worst African-American graduation rate (43 percent), but one of the highest overall graduating rates. In those two states, white students were twice as likely to graduate as black students.

Nationally, the graduation rate for African-American students was 56 percent. Several states performed significantly above that level. West Virginia had the highest graduation rate for African-Americans (71 percent), followed by Massachusetts (70 percent), Arkansas (67 percent), and New Jersey (66 percent).

The national graduation rate for Latinos was 54 percent. The lowest-scoring states in this category were Georgia (32 percent), Alabama (33 percent), Tennessee (38 percent), North Carolina (38 percent), Nevada (40 percent), Oregon (43 percent), Colorado (47 percent), and Arkansas (48 percent).

Montana had the highest graduation rate for Latino students (82 percent), a statistic that should be tempered by recognition that Montana has few Latino students. Perhaps the best performers in this category were Maryland and Louisiana, each with 70 percent graduation rates for Latinos.

"Implausible" School Dropout Reports

Greene offered some withering commentary on school bureaucrats' use of "event dropouts"--the students who leave school within one year--to issue dropout reports. In order to look good, central offices often assume children moved out of town or followed some route other than dropping out of school.

That method results in implausible reports, such as one from the Dallas Independent School District claiming an annual dropout rate of only 1.3 percent. The BAEO study, by contrast, shows Dallas' graduation rate is just 52 percent.

"If only 1.3 percent of students drop out each year," asked Greene, "how is it that Dallas had 9,924 students in 8th grade in 1993 but only 5,659 graduates in 1998, while the total student population in the district went up by 10.5 percent?" There is simply no other reasonable explanation for several thousand missing students than that they dropped out, "making the 1.3 percent event dropout rate simply unbelievable."

Greene urged the NCES to vastly improve the quality of data on high school completion, a key measure of educational quality. While the federal government annually spends $40 million for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which the NCES uses to document student acquisition of knowledge, it spends less than $1 million collecting dropout/high school completion statistics.

Robert Holland is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, a public policy think tank in Arlington, Virginia. His email address is rholl1176@yahoo.com.

For more information . . .

The Manhattan Institute report by Jay P. Greene, "High School Graduation Rates in the United States," prepared for the Black Alliance for Educational Options, is available from the Manhattan Institute's Web site at http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_baeo.htm.

National Center for Education Statistics, "Dropout Rates in the United States 2000," November 15, 2001 News Release containing links to the full report, http://www.ed.gov/PressReleases/11-2001/11152001.html.

George A. Clowes, "Half of Students Drop Out in Large City Schools," School Reform News, April 2001, http://www.heartland.org/education/apr01/dropout.htm.

Alan Bonsteel, "How Dropout Rates Hit the Radar Screen in California," School Reform News, February 2001, http://www.heartland.org/education/feb01/radar.htm.

Alan Bonsteel, "One in Four U.S. Students Drops Out," School Reform News, February 2001, http://www.heartland.org/education/feb01/dropout.htm.

Alan Bonsteel, "California Dropout Numbers Exposed as Phony," School Reform News, September 1999, http://www.heartland.org/education/sep99/california.htm.

George A. Clowes, "How To Reduce the Dropout Rate," School Reform News, September 1999, http://www.heartland.org/education/sep99/reduce.htm.