High School Drop-out Rates Rise

RAY SUAREZ: To discuss the magnitude of the high school drop-out problem and why there are no definitive figures on this, we're joined by the authors of two reports that looked at that issue.

Larry Mishel is president of the Economic Policy Institute.

And Jay Greene is the head of the education reform department at the University of Arkansas. He's also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Jay Greene, let's start with you, with the basic question: Are there more American kids dropping out than you would be able to know from the published and announced statistics given by school districts?

JAY GREENE, Manhattan Institute: I think so. I think a reasonable estimate of the national graduation rate is about 70 percent. And that is higher than officially published statistics by school districts and by the U.S. Department of Education.

RAY SUAREZ: And, Larry Mishel, same question. If you just went by what schools are telling us, is the drop-out rate actually higher?

LAWRENCE MISHEL, Economic Policy Institute: Well, I think the dropout rate is roughly that nine out of 11 students do graduate -- that's about 82-83 percent -- and around three out of four minority students.

School districts don't always report things that way, nor does the national Department of Education. I think it's important to realize that we've made tremendous progress over time in lifting the graduation rate of all students.

Now, the gap between blacks and whites, whites and Hispanics, is still far too high, but it's a lot better than it was 40 years ago. For instance, only around 40 percent of blacks completed high school with a diploma or an equivalency certificate in the early 1960s, and now the completion rate is double that.

So we've made tremendous progress, but we still have a ways to go.

RAY SUAREZ: Professor Greene, do you agree that we've made tremendous progress, even if you two gentlemen may disagree on the numbers?

JAY GREENE: I actually don't think we've made much progress over the last three decades. If you simply look at the ratio of the number of diplomas awarded to the 17-year-old population, according to the census, we've had a graduation rate nationwide of about 70 percent for three decades.

We hit actually a peak in national graduation rates in 1979 at 76 percent, and now it's slipped down to about 70 percent. There were 2.7 million high school diplomas awarded in 2003 by public high schools. And, according to the census, there were about four million kids who could have been in that cohort to graduate, so about 70 percent.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Dr. Mishel, why is it so hard to get everybody on the same page and come up with a number that both reflects reality and everybody can agree on? A certain cohort of kids marches through the front door in the ninth grade. Some number less than that marches out in the 12th. How come it's so hard to get an accurate number?

LARRY MISHEL: Well, it's hard because schools only report how many students are in ninth grade and then how many diplomas are granted every year. We don't know how many students actually enter ninth grade for the first time because many students are retained and repeat.

And we don't know, of the diplomas that are granted, whether they are for any particular cohort or class.

So we can't really match how many people walked in and how many people walked out. And we don't know for any particular school or school district, really, how many people transferred in or transferred out.

I know from national data, which follows students over time -- so I don't have to worry about how many people started, how many people transfer in, transfer out -- that the graduation rate is around 82, 83 percent, and three out of four for minorities.

We know that, at the national level, where we really have a problem is: Do we have any data at the local school district or school level that can tell us graduation rates? The answer is we don't really have much going there, and I fear we won't for quite a long time.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Professor Greene, how do you answer that? How do you come up with a number that works for all the people who need to know?

JAY GREENE: Well, I think it's relatively easy to figure out what the national graduation rate must look like, because, again, while we don't know precisely how many enter ninth grade every year, we have a pretty good idea of how many are in the age cohort that ought to be graduating from census figures.

And we also know how many diplomas are awarded pretty well. And so, for the figure to be 82 percent, as Dr. Mishel says, there would have to be a half-million more diplomas awarded than are actually reported by public schools. And so we know it has to be less than that.

Now, I think Dr. Mishel is entirely right that it's hard for us to know it with precision at an individual school level or school district level because there we don't have the same reliable information about how many students enter ninth grade for the first time, but we can still come up with ballpark estimates that will be roughly accurate.

RAY SUAREZ: Should districts be able to count someone who gets a GED -- years down the road -- be able to count someone who gets a diploma in five or six years as a successfully educated student?

LARRY MISHEL: Well, I think we ought to have graduation measures that show all the different ways of doing it, how many people got a diploma on time, how many people got it from five or six years, how many people got a GED.

We need to know all those different things. I think in some communities, I don't think we ought to have a lot of pressure that it has to be actually on time. I think sometimes students struggle. We actually retain them to make sure that they covered the ninth grade material, so we should give them five years to graduate.

But if we're really going to hold schools accountable, then we really need to give them the resources to develop the statistical capacity, and I don't think anyone is really talking about that right now.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Professor, is it fair to say that you would favor in your studies a more restrictive measure so that the school numbers, announced numbers, might reflect your research more closely?

JAY GREENE: Well, I think the headline -- I agree with Dr. Mishel that we ought to have multiple measures of graduation rates. But I do think that the headline number ought to focus on students who receive a regular high school diploma and not include GED recipients for a few reasons.

One is that GED recipients don't have the same life outcomes as regular graduates. They have life outcomes that look very much like drop-outs, and so we wouldn't want to combine them with regular graduates.

Also, GED recipients, properly speaking, are drop-outs from the high school system who later earn a certificate, and so we wouldn't want to credit them to the school from which they dropped out.

So I think there are some good reasons to focus on a headline number, which would be the regular high school graduation rate, and I also entirely agree with Dr. Mishel that the resources that schools have to compute this accurately are lacking. And their motivation to count it accurately is also lacking.

RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Mishel, a quick response?

LARRY MISHEL: Yes, I undertook research in this area because I was worried by people claiming that only half the minority students were graduating. In fact, I found that three out of four are graduating with a regular diploma, and half of those who would be considered drop-out actually get a GED, which allows them to go to college, go into the military or other training, and that these completion rates have actually grown.

So I think it is important to keep track of what schools do, but we also -- we're a country of second chances, and we have second-chance systems. We need to be able to provide them. I think we should not to put down a GED. Sometimes that's a good alternative. I think we would prefer that most kids get a diploma, because that is going to be better for them in the long run.

But a lot of people get a GED, go into the military, and do very well, and maybe one will be president some day.

RAY SUAREZ: Dr. Mishel, Professor Greene, thank you, both.