High School Completion Rates Research Articles

Technology to Advance High School and Undergraduate Students with Disabilities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Americans with disabilities are underemployed in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) at higher rates than their nondisabled peers. This article provides an overview of the National Science Foundation's Research in Disabilities Education (RDE) program, of technology use by students with disabilities (SWD) in STEM, and of rigorous research designs needed to examine which technology interventions have the highest impact on high school and undergraduate degree completion rates for SWD in STEM. Studies are needed to examine how technologies advance undergraduate SWD in their STEM degree programs, contribute to graduation, and facilitate successful transitions to graduate STEM study and/or the workforce. This body of research contributes to the success of postsecondary implementation programs for SWD in STEM, resulting in the graduation of more SWD in STEM fields and advancing our country's science, engineering, and technology competitiveness in the world.

The Effect of Minimum Wage Rates on High School Completion

Does increasing the minimum wage reduce the high school completion rate? Previous research has suffered from (1. narrow time horizons, (2. potentially inadequate measures of states’ high school completion rates, and (3. potentially inadequate measures of minimum wage rates. Overcoming each of these limitations, we analyze the impact of changes in state and federal minimum wage rates on state high school completion rates for the graduating classes of 1982 through 2005. Our state-level analyses, which consist of a series of state and year fixed-effects models with controls for state-year time-varying covariates, provide no support for the argument that increasing the minimum wage reduces rates of high school completion.

Reading and School Completion: Critical Connections and Matthew Effects

This article argues that reading interventions are a key dropout prevention strategy. A review of the literature connects reading skills and interventions with events such as grade retention, placement in special education, and high school dropout. In general, data indicate that intensive early interventions positively affect students' reading skills, resulting in lower rates of grade retention, reduced incidence of placement in special education, and higher rates of high school completion. Difficulties with reading may interfere with students' motivation and engagement at school and with learning. The article presents an integrated model describing spiraling, or Matthew, effects across reading competence, student engagement and motivation, and eventual high school completion or dropout. Finally, it describes a student engagement intervention, Check & Connect, along with a rationale for combining student engagement and early reading interventions to promote school completion among youth.

A Correlational Study of the Relationship Between a Coordinated School Health Program and School Achievement: A Case for School Health

The study was conducted to determine whether there is a relationship between the Coordinated School Health Program (CSHP) and student academic performance. Data were collected from schools and the community for three reports for 50 states and the District of Columbia (DC). The School Health Policies and Programs Survey (SHPPS), the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the U.S. Census 2000 Profile were used to study the relationships among three parameters: (a) The intervention called a CSHP: (b) Student achievement; and (c) Rate of poverty in each state. A stepwise regression analysis was conducted, controlling for poverty using state-level data. Components of a CSHP had statistically significant relationships with academic achievement. Students in states with policies promoting students' health demonstrated higher academic scores and higher rates of high school completion.

Seeing the United States Education System through the Prism of International Comparisons

The is rapidly changing, and the challenges to individuals and societies imposed by globalization and modernization are widely acknowledged. Increasingly diverse and interconnected populations, rapid technological change in the workplace and in everyday life, and the instantaneous availability of vast amounts of information represent but a few of these new demands. In this globalized world, individuals and countries that invest heavily in education increasingly benefit socially and economically from that choice. Among the 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries with the largest expansion of college education over the last decades, most still see rising earnings differentials for college graduates, suggesting that an increase in knowledge workers does not necessarily lead to a decrease in their pay, as is the case for low-skilled workers. In addition to education, another factor in the globalization process is technological development, but this, too, depends on education, not just because tomorrow's knowledge workers and innovators require high levels of education, but also because a highly educated workforce is a pre- requisite for adopting and absorbing new technologies and increasing productivity. Together, learned skills and technology have flattened the such that all work that can be digitized, automated, and outsourced can now be done by the most effective and competitive individuals, enterprises, or countries, wherever they are. The current economic downturn is likely to reinforce the impact skills will have on the economic and social outcomes of education for individuals. The United States is losing its educational advantage To date, no country has been able to capitalize on the opportunities this flat world provides more than the United States, which can draw on the most highly educated labor force among the principal industrialized nations, at least when measured in terms of formal qualifications. However, this advantage is largely a result of the first-mover advantage, which the United States gained after Word War II by massively increasing school enrollments. That advantage is now eroding quickly as more and more countries reach and surpass U.S. qualification levels. In fact, many countries are now close to ensuring that nearly all young adults complete at least a high school education, which the OECD indicators highlight as the baseline qualification for reasonable earnings and employment prospects. Over time, this will translate into better workforce qualifications in these countries. In contrast, the United States stood still on this measure, and among OECD countries, only New Zealand, Spain, Turkey, and Mexico now have lower high school completion rates than the United States. Even when including qualifications such as the GED (variously refers to Graduate Equivalent Degree, General Equivalency Diploma or General Education (al) Diploma,) that people can acquire later in life to make up for unsuccessful school completion, the United States has slipped from rank 1 among OECD countries for adults born in the 1940s to rank 12 for those born in the 1970s. Again, that is not because completion rates in the United States declined, but because they have risen so much faster in many other countries. Two generations ago, South Korea had the economic output of Afghanistan today and was at rank 24 in terms of educational output among today's OECD countries. Today it is the top performer in terms of the proportion of school graduates, with 96% of an age cohort obtaining a high school diploma, compared with 75% in the United States. Similar trends are visible in college education, in which the United States slipped between 1995 and 2005 from rank 2 to rank 14 - again, not because United States college graduation rates declined, but because they rose so much faster in many other OECD countries. U.S. graduate output is particularly low in science. …

Dropping Out of High School: A Meta-Analysis Assessing the Effect of Messages in the Home and in School1

The high school completion rate for the U.S. has increased only slightly over the last quarter of a century. A promising area of focus for dropout prevention efforts may be found in research that assesses how messages about educational attainment may affect school completion rates. The supportive communication framework is used to address how communication in the home and in school may affect student educational attainment. An extensive search of the student dropout literature was followed by standard meta-analytic procedures. The average weighted effect for communication in the home on high school completion was r=.21, and the effect for communication in school on high school completion was r=.14. The age of subjects and region of the country in which subjects lived were addressed as possible moderators of the relationship between communication in the home and school and educational attainment. No evidence that these variables moderated the relationship was found.

Rate and characteristics of men with an intellectual disability in pre‐trial detention

Background Various lines of research point to the overrepresentation of individuals with intellectual disability1 (ID) in the criminal justice system. Studies have also shown that individuals with ID are vulnerable to mental health problems. To date there have been no Canadian studies of individuals with an ID in the criminal justice system.Method The present study reports on the sociodemographic, mental health and criminological characteristics of 281 individuals with an ID from a Canadian study of men in a pre‐trial holding centre.Results Almost 19% of the men had a probable ID, and nearly one‐third (29.9%) were in the borderline IQ range. As was the case for their non‐ID counterparts, the mean age of the probable ID group was in the early 30s, few were employed, and most had low incomes. Individuals in the probable and borderline ID groups had lower rates of high school completion than those in the average intellectual ability range. Over 60% of individuals with an ID had a substance use disorder, and 1 in 5 was intoxicated at the time of assessment. These rates were similar across groups, and to those found in the literature. A large majority of individuals with ID had a previous conviction, and most had previously committed a violent offence.Conclusions Among other limitations, the sample may not have been entirely representative of the total population of men in the pre‐trial detention centre, given the relatively high refusal rate (39.5%). Results are discussed in terms of orienting criminological and mental health services as a function of the level of intellectual and adaptive functioning of individuals with ID.

Accurately Assessing High School Graduation Rates

Recent studies have argued that there is a dropout crisis in the U.S. But Mr. Mishel and Mr. Roy find that this contention is based on flawed analyses of inadequate data. Using a much wider range of sources, they conclude that the situation is not nearly so dire as is commonly believed. ********** CONVENTIONAL wisdom asserts that there is a newly discovered dropout crisis in our high schools. As the National Governors Association states, know that about a third of our students are not graduating from high school.... About three-fourths of white students graduate from high school, but only of African American and Hispanic students do. (1) Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute and Christopher Swanson, formerly with the Urban Institute, are primarily responsible for this claim. They have published reports showing these extraordinarily high dropout rates nationwide, for the states, and for many specific school districts. They also claim that graduation rates have been flat for several decades. (2) Greene's and Swanson's advocacy organizations, such as the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Education Trust, and the Harvard Civil Rights Project. (3) We have come to different conclusions. Both Greene and Swanson calculate dropout rates from enrollment and diploma data reported by school districts, collected by the states and forwarded to the federal government's Common Core of Data, which is managed by the National Center for Education Statistics. Using different data sources, including the U.S. Census and several high-quality longitudinal surveys, we have found that graduation rates have improved for decades, particularly for minorities, though less so in recent years. Instead of half of black students graduating with diplomas, as Greene and Swanson maintain, we conclude that three-fourths of black students obtain regular diplomas and, of the 25% who do not graduate, fully go on to obtain a GED that allows them to enroll in college, enlist in the military, or take advantage of other postsecondary training opportunities. It is a similar story for Hispanics. Rather than indicating stagnant graduation rates, census data show that the high school completion rate for young black adults (aged 25 to 29) was 42% in 1962 and roughly doubled by 2000. (4) There remains a substantial racial gap in high school completion--about 10 percentage points--but it is a far smaller gap than existed 20, 30, or 40 years ago. Trends in Hispanic graduation rates are more difficult to measure over a long period, but it is clear that graduation rates have been steadily improving over the last 20 years: the percentage of Hispanics (aged 20 to 22) who have a high school diploma (excluding GEDs) increased from 62% in 1984 to 76% in 2002. (5) In short, Greene's and Swanson's estimates are more pessimistic than ours. Ordinarily, only experts would have to make technical judgments about the relative quality of data sources and methods of analysis. But in this case, important policy implications flow from whether you believe, for example, that the black dropout rate is 50% and stagnant or 25% and falling. Neither rate is acceptable, but education policy makers would approach the problem very differently depending on which story was true. REALITY CHECK When natural or social scientists examine the reliability of data, one of their first challenges is to see whether results are consistent with other facts that they know. If data are implausible, we should be cautious about accepting them until we have carefully checked how they were derived. If, for example, we were suddenly presented with data showing a big drop in manufacturing imports and a jump in exports, we would immediately be skeptical if these data were inconsistent with unemployment figures showing large layoffs of manufacturing workers. Of course, we would still have to investigate why the import/export data were flawed, but until we did so we would be hesitant to accept them. …

Access to College: The Role of Tuition, Financial Aid, Scholastic Preparation and College Supply in Public College Enrollments

Rapid tuition increases over the last few decades have made public institutions much less affordable than they once were. This and other policy changes may be affecting college enrollment rates across the country. This article examines how student preparation and college supply interact with the usual factors of tuition, fi nancial aid, and family background to explain state by state variation in public college enrollment rates among Black, Hispanic, and White youth over the 1990s. This study fi nds that rapid tuition increases over the 1990s, changes in federal needbased aid, and steady increases in merit-based fi nancial aid cannot explain variation in public college enrollment rates during the 1990s. What can help explain this variation are a state’s expenditures on state need-based aid and its investment in public higher education capacity. The study also fi nds that differences in the high school completion rate of Hispanic youth, among states and over time, help explain patterns of Hispanic enrollment in public postsecondary institutions. The article concludes that the current policy emphasis of maintaining low tuition may not be the best use of public subsidies in terms of promoting equitable access to higher education.

On Your Own Without a Net: The Transition to Adulthood for Vulnerable Populations

On Your Own Without a Net: The Transition to Adulthood for Vulnerable Populations

Getting Young People to Do the Right Thing

A COLLEAGUE at ECS, whose earliest years were spent a U.S. Air Force base in Germany, recalls that the first book he ever heard read to him as a child is Der Strummelpeter, a collection of German morality tales for children. In this book, boys who suck their thumbs have the offending digit unceremoniously dispatched by the tailor's scissors. Children who don't finish their dinner starve to death. And many, many other amusing anecdotes. You get the picture. point is, it's amazing the lengths to which people will go to get their children to do the right thing. And in the world of education policy, though we're not typically reading Der Strummelpeter to high school kids, policy makers over the last 30 years or so have been adopting one approach after another in an attempt to keep young people from making one of the biggest mistakes of their lives--dropping out of school. As many readers know, the efforts of the past have unfortunately been largely cookie-cutter policies and programs that have met with limited success. Recently, however, awakened by the more accurate graduation data that result from better methods of tracking who's leaving school (part of the larger recent push for general high school reform), researchers, policy makers, and even Oprah have taken a second look at the factors that lead students to drop out and are undertaking efforts that might be more likely to keep kids from making a decision with potentially dire consequences. One of my favorite reports to have come out this year is a white paper this topic by Craig Jerald for Achieve, Inc., and Jobs for the Future. Titled Identifying Potential Dropouts: Key Lessons for Building an Early Warning Data System, it synthesizes recent research and separates the myths from the facts about what contributes to young people's decision to say so long to the schoolhouse. Jerald's study notes that, contrary to what many believe, student demographics don't necessarily dictate who will stay in school and who will leave. Academic performance and engagement in school carry a great deal of weight in student decisions whether or not to drop Especially in urban districts, where high proportions of students have demographic risk factors, Jerald points out, very low academic performance and educational engagement can help discriminate the ones most likely to be the path to dropping out. Though risk factors themselves can't tell us who will tough it out through high school and who will leave, research points to one risk factor that appears to play a significant role in determining who graduates from high school. The On-Track Indicator as a Predictor of High School Graduation, another favorite study of mine, suggests that dropout prevention efforts should recognize the importance of the freshman year of high school. This 2005 paper from the Consortium Chicago School Research relates the findings of a study of high school completion rates among Chicago Public School students. researchers found that students who were on at the end of grade 9--by the researchers' definition, those who had earned enough credits to go to grade 10 and had failed no more than one semester in a core subject--were substantially less likely to drop out than their peers who did not meet one (or both) of the on-track criteria. Interestingly, the researchers also found that many students who came to high school with low test scores were track in grade 9 and finished high school in four years and that some students with good test scores in the middle grades did not make a successful transition transition to high school and ended up off track. Thus performance before high school is not a solid indicator of who's going to be walking across the stage to accept a sheepskin four years later. A 2006 report goes straight to the source. The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts is made up of the findings from focus groups of recent dropouts the reasons they dropped out and what would have made them stay in school. …

High School Exit Examinations and State-Level Completion and GED Rates, 1975 Through 2002

This article investigates the extent to which state-mandated high school exit examinations are associated with state-level public high school completion rates in the United States. The authors estimate a series of state and year fixed effects models using a new measure of state-level public high school completion rates and archival information about states’ policies on high school exit examinations from 1975 through 2002. The study finds that state high school exit examinations—particularly the “more difficult” examinations that have been implemented recently in some states—are associated with lower public high school completion rates and higher rates of General Educational Development test taking. Furthermore, the study finds that the association between state policies on high school exit examinations and public high school completion grows stronger as states become more racially and ethnically diverse and as poverty rates increase.

Early Childhood Intervention and Educational Attainment: Age 22 Findings From the Chicago Longitudinal Study

This study investigated whether participation in the Chicago Child-Parent Center (CPC) Preschool Program associated with higher educational attainment (high school completion, highest grade completed, and college attendance) at age 22. The study sample included 1,334 youth (869 in the preschool group and 465 in the comparison group) from the Chicago Longitudinal Study. Probit regression was used to examine the group differences in educational attainment controlling for child and family characteristics, including gender, race/ethnicity, and family risk status. Results indicated that CPC preschool participation was significantly associated with more years of education (11.33 vs. 10.93, p < .001), a higher rate of high school completion (Diploma or General Equivalency Diploma [GED], 66.9% vs. 55.3%, p < .001), and a higher rate of college attendance (23.0% vs. 17.9%, p = .055). Only gender subgroups showed an interaction effect with program participation on high school completion among all subgroups. Males benefitted more from the preschool program than females on high school completion. Findings demonstrate that large-scale school-based programs can have enduring effects into early adulthood.

Equality, Priority, and Positional Goods

The question of whether those who think of themselves as egalitarians really do, or should, value equality has received considerable attention in recent years. Alternative principles have been offered as better capturing those distributive intuitions formerly known as ‘egalitarian’. Some endorse sufficiency—comparisons do not matter; what is important is that all have enough. Others favor giving priority to the worse off. The

A New People

IF ONE is going to build a wall, it is best to ask first what is being walled in and what is being walled out. I borrow this thought from Robert Frost, but I was prompted to bring it up by those in Congress who want to build a wall along the Rio Grande and the school principal in Kansas who suspended a child for speaking Spanish in the hallway. These people have a lot in common. Dismiss the idea that a wall will keep out terrorists or that suspending one Hispanic kid with the effrontery to speak his native language will protect American values. Fear makes us do strange things. Instead of spending a pile on the false security of a cement wall, why not instead provide guest-worker permits that would free up immigration officials to focus on border crossers who are seeking more than just a job? And if politicians object to hearing Spanish on the street, why do they cut funds for adult literacy classes that have waiting lists of English-language learners? For educators who don't know or don't want to know how to deal with and respect another culture, I have a piece of advice: get a grip. To quote a recent report by the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University on the challenges ahead, this nation is becoming a new people. The demographics are not something that can be walled out or suspended, and the sooner educators and policy makers acknowledge what is happening in this country, the quicker we can move forward. Behind the rhetoric about our growing diversity are some startling statistics that should inspire much more than fear. For example, who will make up our future work force--from those who clean buildings to those who design them? Analyzing census data, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education concludes that in a decade and a half the white working-age population will have declined to 63% (from 82% in 1980). This is happening because larger numbers of younger workers are members of ethnic minorities, and larger numbers of white workers are retiring. The largest increase among young workers will be among Hispanics. Because the fastest-growing populations are ethnic minorities, the work force that will propel our economy and shape our society--and also provide the Social Security check of almost everyone reading this--could have a lower level of personal income than current workers. Unless something is done to close the education gap, according to the study, the most highly educated generation in the history of the U.S. could be replaced by a generation with far lower levels of (as measured by high school and college completion rates). While ethnic minorities reside in all states, 90% of Hispanics live in 16 states, and 90% of blacks live in 21 states. This means that inequalities in terms of and income will exist between the states as well as within them. Another study, by the Pew Hispanic Center, presents equally dramatic data. The Hispanic population is growing faster in the South than anywhere else in the country. Among the six states studied, the increase in the percentage of Hispanics ranged from 204% to 394%. In some counties, the growth rate exceeded 1,000%. Between 1990 and 2000, the school-age population of Hispanic children in these states grew by 322%, and the rate of growth was even faster in the preschool population. During the same time span, the number of students with limited proficiency in English climbed from 18,000 to 64,000. By next year, Hispanics will make up at least 10% of the population of these states. The Pew study points out that the current impact of Hispanics in the states is only beginning to be felt because most of those who have recently arrived are young men. But as these men bring families into the country, the schools will experience an even larger surge in the number of Hispanic students (the black population in these states increased by 18% as well). …

State-level high school completion rates: Concepts, measures, and trends.

Since the mid 1970s the national rate at which incoming 9th graders have completed high school has fallen slowly but steadily; this is also true in 41 states. In 2002, about three in every four students who might have completed high school actually did so; in some states this figure is substantially lower. In this paper I review state-level measures of high school completion rates and describe and validate a new measure that reports these rates for 1975 through 2002. Existing measures based on the Current Population Survey are conceptually imperfect and statistically unreliable. Measures based on Common Core Data (CCD) dropout information are unavailable for many states and have different conceptual weaknesses. Existing measures based on CCD enrollment and completion data are systematically biased by migration, changes in cohort size, and/or grade retention. The new CCD-based measure described here is considerably less biased, performs differently in empirical analyses, and gives a different picture of the dropout situation across states and over time.

The Bachelor's Degree: A Hereditary Privilege?

RIGHTLY or wrongly, more and more people are coming to believe that a college degree is necessary for achieving good life in America, exceptions like Bill Gates notwithstanding. It is dismaying, then, to find that acquisition of this degree is taking on character of hereditary privilege. Tom Mortenson, who publishes monthly newsletter Postsecondary Education Opportunity, uses census data to track who's been getting bachelor degrees since 1970. Like so many other statistics these days, data reflect a growing stratification of society. his June 2005 issue, Mortenson writes, In effect higher education is now driving increasingly static class structure of United States. Children lucky enough to be born into highest-income families are now virtually assured of a bachelor's degree by age 24, while those unlucky enough to be born into bottom quartile of family income only very slimmest chance of gaining similar status. Not that likelihood of earning a college degree was ever equal among high- and low-income families. 1970, 40.2% of children born in highest quartile of family incomes attained a bachelor's degree. The figures were 14.9%, 10%, and 6.2% for quartiles 2, 3, and 4 respectively. (Mortenson gives following figures as income of quartiles in 2003: top, above $95,000; second, $63,000-95,000; third, $36,000-63,000; bottom, below $36,000.) Beginning around 1980, though, proportion of those in top quartile who earned a college degree started to grow rapidly. By 2003, 74.9% of top-quartile children were earning a bachelor's by age 24. Those in second-highest quartile had increased their rate of earning degrees somewhat to 27.7%, but students in third and fourth quartiles saw very little gain, reaching only 13.2% and 8.6% respectively. Rates of high school graduation, first hurdle to clear in moving toward a college degree, also reflect differences among income quartiles. Mortenson finds that in 2003, 91.6% of top-income quartile graduated from high school, compared to 88.2%, 83.9%, and 70.2% of quartiles 2, 3, and 4 respectively. (These figures are higher than those recently reported in studies by Walt Haney, Paul Barton, Jay Greene, and Gary Orfield and his colleagues at Harvard Civil Rights Project, but they are about same as those derived from NELS studies. I will return to dropouts in a future column and try to resolve conflicting figures.) Whatever actual differences in high school completion rates, students from four income quartiles who do make it to college differ dramatically in their success. 2003, figures for bachelor's degree attainment by age 24 among students who reached college were: * top quartile: 93.3%; * second-highest: 41.0%; * third quartile: 22.6%; * bottom quartile: 20.6%. The increasing advantage of wealthy also shows up in changes in degree attainment. Mortenson notes the country's (brief) commitment to equalizing educational opportunity in 1970s and points out that it had ended by late in that decade. From 1977 to 2003, changes in degree attainment looked like this: * top quartile: +15.9%; * second-highest: +6.5%; * third quartile: +0.5%; * bottom quartile: -6.2%. And future doesn't look so good, either. The segments of American population with largest projected growth through 2018 are also segments with lowest incomes. There is plenty of blame to go around for these conditions. Mortenson finds federal government to blame for reducing financial aid to families for whom sending children to college is a financial hardship. States, he claims, have been aggressively shifting costs of higher education from state taxpayers to students and their families without regard to ability of low- and moderate-income families to pay these higher costs. …

Dropping Out of High School among Mexican-Origin Youths: Is Early Work Experience a Factor?

In this article, Anane Olatunji examines the effects of work experience on early high school attrition among Mexican-origin adolescents. He proposes a theoretical model that takes assimilation into account as a potential predictor of the consequences of work for this group. In order to estimate the effects of eighth-grade work experience on dropping out of school in 1990, he analyzed data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988. He begins this article with a brief review of literature on high school dropouts and youth employment. He argues that this topic is particularly salient for Mexican-origin youths because they not only comprise the majority of Hispanics, the nation largest ethnic minority group, but also exhibit an alarmingly low high school completion rate. Overall, the results support conventional models that researchers have used to predict outcomes of teenage employment. Among Mexicanorigin adolescents, however, girls were three and a half times more likely than boys to leave school, after controlling for work and other factors. He concludes the article with implications for future research, especially the role that gender plays in predicting early high school attrition among Mexican-origin youths.

Why We Harass Nerds and Freaks: A Formal Theory of Student Culture and Norms

By a 2-to-l margin (60% to 28%), American parents say if forced to choose, they would prefer their sons or daughters to make C grades and be in extracurricul ar activities rather than make A grades and not be active.' Why? Certainly, they are not expecting their child to make it into the NFL. Probably, they believe extracurricular activities teach teamwork, time management, self-discipline, and other skills important later in life and on the job. Those who participate in sports during high school spend more time doing homework and less time watching TV, are less likely to drop out of high school, are more likely to attend college, and earn more as an adult. There is controversy, however, about whether the association between sports and earnings reflects a causal relationship or a selection effect. While sports has causal effects on schooling, effects on earnings probably result from selection.^ Regardless, getting As rather than Cs has much larger effects on high school and college completion rates and labor market success than participating in extracurricul ar activities. Nearly 99% of students with A averages (and comparably higher test scores) in eighth grade complete high school, while only 80% of C students graduate.' For seniors in 1982 who planned on getting a BA degree or higher, chances of actually achieving that goal during the next decade were four times greater for A than C students.'* Grubb found that, holding years of schooling constant, an A rather than a C average in high school raised male earnings at age 31 by $5,549 (20%) and female earnings by $2,906 (17.7%).' If parents knew these facts, one would think they would choose A grades over participation in extracurricular activities. Many may not know how important academic achievement is to future success. However, we suggest parents responding to the Gallup survey interpreted makes A grades and not be active as a code for nerd or dork, while athletics is the ticket to social status. Coleman' was the first sociologist to examine adolescent status systems. In the 10 Illinois high schools he studied in 1958, athletic achievement was the single most important criterion for high status. Tannenbaum,' who conducted a similar study at a predominantly Jewish high school in New York City, asked students to react to written descriptions of eight fictitious students. The ratings from most positive to most negative were as follows: 1. Athlete - Brilliant - Non-studious 2. Athlete - Average - Non-studious 3. Athlete - Average - Studious 4. Athlete - Brilliant - Studious 5. Non-athlete - Brilliant - Non-studious 6. Non-athlete - Average - Non-studious

High Schools and Reform

IN CASE you haven't noticed, the traditional American public high school is on the chopping block. During the past two decades, school reformers have sighed when speaking of change in secondary schools, saying they were the hardest -- and would be the last -- nutshell they would seek to crack in making significant improvements in the education of young people. Efforts in secondary schools would need to be incremental, most experts thought. Instead, a sudden burst of talk, money, and policy proposals has made it obvious that those in high schools are going to have to act -- and soon. In a recent speech to a Chamber of Commerce audience, even the dour, academic Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan provided historical and economic justifications for moving high schools from their comprehensive focus toward an exclusive emphasis on what now passes for an honors program. The expansion of high schools with a broad curriculum in the first half of the 20th century, Greenspan said, served the needs of the economy well. A high school diploma represented the training needed to be successful in most sectors of the American economy. Thus the economic returns of a diploma rose, as did high school completion rates. Today, the country is in a new era, when higher skills are an international commodity, and, instead of defending protectionism, Greenspan argued, we need to discover the means to enhance the skills of our work force, especially those workers lower on the skill ladder. That effort needs to begin in kindergarten, he added. But it is critical for high schools and community colleges. Similar economic arguments for transforming high schools were used by Susan Sclafani, long-time advisor to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and now assistant secretary for vocational and adult education. In describing the proposals for reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, she made it obvious that the department wants to use this program to push an agenda for high school reform. Barely mentioning career or technology goals in remarks to a forum in Washington, D.C., she outlined an accountability-based, academic-focused direction under a reauthorized Perkins Act. High school transformation is taking place, however, without federal intrusion. A nascent school movement has turned into a national cause because of the infusion of billions of dollars by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Foundation funds are stimulating the break-up of large high schools into smaller ones as well as the creation of new, smaller learning environments. More than that, money from the Gates Foundation is putting small high schools on the agendas of governors and state legislators, national organizations, and evaluators. Not even past reform efforts by such stalwart foundation heavyweights as Ford and the Carnegie Corporation matched the depth and focus of what the Gates Foundation is accomplishing. While the Gates approach tends to see personal support as key to student success, Ready or Not: Creating a High School Diploma That Counts, a report released in February by the American Diploma Project, defines student success exclusively in terms of meeting high academic standards. Not only that, under its proposals, all states would be working from the same set of standards. This call for states to rework their standards and assessments into more consistent national benchmarks comes from an interesting combination of national groups. The sponsors of the American Diploma Project are the Education Trust, a policy and advocacy group focused on the needs of poor kids; the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, headed by Chester Finn, who supports more competition for public education; and Achieve, Inc., a national group focused on helping states with standards-based accountability efforts. …