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Is the Glass Emptying or Filling Up? Reconciling Divergent Trends in High School Completion and Dropout

Associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, 909 Social Sciences, 267 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455; warre046{at}tc.umn.edu. His recent work focuses on measuring high school dropout and completion rates, on the consequences of state high school exit examinations for student outcomes, and on the magnitude of panel conditioning effects in longitudinal studies.

Andrew Halpern-Manners

Doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, 909 Social Sciences, 267 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455; halp0020{at}umn.edu. His areas of specialization are social stratification, social demography, sociology of education, and quantitative methodology. He is currently studying the role Mexican out-migration plays in shaping the educational outcomes and labor force participation of remaining family members

Conclusions about levels and trends in high school dropout differ dramatically depending on whether dropout is measured using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) or from the Common Core of Data (CCD). Using CPS- and CCD-based drop-out measures for 16- to 19-year-olds—which differ solely in their estimates of the number of 16- to 19-year-olds holding high school credentials—the authors show that half of the differences in estimated drop-out rates are due to how private school graduates and GED recipients are counted. The other half is likely attributable to CPS respondents’ misstatements of their children’s high school completion status. The rate at which students complete (or fail to complete) high school is best measured using CCD data.

Key Words: Common Core of Data • Current Population Survey • high school dropout • measurement

Educational Researcher, Vol. 36, No. 6, 335-343 (2007)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X07306580


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