The 9th grade shock and the high school dropout crisis
► We use administrative records to measure patterns of high school attrition and graduation. ► We find that failure, as measured by grade retention and attrition, are as common graduation. ► Our results challenge the notion that levels of high school completion are nearly universal. ► The ‘9th grade...
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Published in | Social science research Vol. 41; no. 3; pp. 709 - 730 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
Elsevier Inc
01.05.2012
Academic Press |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | ► We use administrative records to measure patterns of high school attrition and graduation. ► We find that failure, as measured by grade retention and attrition, are as common graduation. ► Our results challenge the notion that levels of high school completion are nearly universal. ► The ‘9th grade shock’, a decline in 9th grade GPA relative to 8th, is a key explanatory variable. ► The ‘9th grade shock’ both mediates background measures and is associated with graduation.
Retrospective questions on educational attainment in national surveys and censuses tend to over-estimate high school graduation rates by 15–20% points relative to administrative records. Administrative data on educational enrollment are, however, only available at the aggregate level (state, school district, and school levels) and the recording of inter-school transfers are generally incomplete. With access to linked individual-level administrative records from a very large “West Coast metropolitan school district” we track patterns of high school attrition and on-time high school graduation of individual students. Even with adjustments for the omission of out-of-district transfers (estimates of omission are presented), the results of this study show that failure in high school, as indexed by retention and attrition, are almost as common as on-time high school graduation. In addition to the usual risk factors of disadvantaged background, we find that the “9th grade shock”—an unpredicted decline in academic performance upon entering high school—is a key mechanism behind the continuing crisis of high school attrition. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Article-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
ISSN: | 0049-089X 1096-0317 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2011.11.014 |