The International Observatory on Academic Achievement - Documentary search

File number :
IST-DSC-10e

Bibliographic reference :
Warren, J.R. (2005). State-Level High School Completion Rates: Concepts, Measures, and Trends. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 13(51), 1-38.

Abstract :

The author reviewed and critiqued a few measures widely used in the United States to calculate the percentage of students who earned a high school diploma. The aim was to develop a more effective measure of the percentage of 9th graders who earned their diplomas in public schools (per state). This measure did not take into account students who earned a General Educational Development (GED) certificate with which high school credits can be obtained.

Current Measures
The author described the two main sources of data that enabled implementation of the measures analyzed, the Current Population Survey (CPS) and Common Core of Data (CCD). After presenting the conceptual and technical problems associated with using the CPS (e.g., sample size in certain states), the author further examined the CCD, whose data served as a basis for the construction of the new measure discussed here.

The limits of several measures using the CCD data were set out. First, the author noted that data previous to the year 1995-1996 could not be taken into account with the measure developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), thus limiting the possibility of conducting historical analyses. Then, he went on to present the Basic Completion Rates (BCR-9 and BCR-8) by establishing the inability of this measure to take into account migration, mortality and grade retention, among others. He also analyzed the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), Adjusted Completion Rate (ACR I and ACR II) and Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI), certain characteristics of which prevent efficient assessment of high school completion rate. To conclude this section, the author presents a series of simulations created with these measures.

A New Measure
With the measure suggested by the author, the Estimated Completion Rates (ECR), elements not considered with other measures can be taken into account, particularly with regard to variability over time of cohort size, migration from one state to the other and grade retention.

The manner with which the percentage of 9th graders who earned their diplomas in a state during a particular year is set out, along with the problems encountered during adjustment of the measure according to migration.

With this measure, the author demonstrated that high school completion rates had fallen slowly but steadily between the years 1975-2002 in 41 states.

Although this new measure represents improvement in comparison with measures mentioned above, the author ends by enumerating the limits of his assessment technique, particularly its inability to calculate the school- and district-level achievement rates along with ethnicity-based and gender-based achievement rates.

Links :
This journal is also available in electronic format.

Key Words :
Completion Rates, Measures, Migration, Grade Retention, Validity, Secondary/High School, Newsletter3

Monitored Countries :
United States