The National Center for Education Statistics is providing updated snapshots of U.S. students through data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, a nationally representative, longitudinal study of more than 23,000 ninth-graders in 2009.
Credit: Maureen Downey
Credit: Maureen Downey
According to the feds: Approximately 2.7 percent of 2009 ninth-graders had dropped out of school by spring 2012 when most would have been in eleventh grade.
The latest data set provides a snapshot of these “early high school dropouts,” those who dropped out of school between ninth and eleventh grade without earning a high school diploma or any alternative credential such as a GED.
Key findings include:
- Between 2009 and 2012, some 2.7 percent of males and 2.6 percent of females had dropped out, a difference that is not statistically significant.
- Asian students dropped out at the lowest rate (0.3 percent), compared with White (2.1 percent), Black (4.3 percent), and Hispanic (3.5 percent) students.
- Nearly 5 percent (4.7 percent) of students whose family socioeconomic status was in the lowest 20 percent had dropped out, compared with 0.6 percent of their peers in the highest 20 percent.
