A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

One of the clearest and most readily quantifiable of the National Education Goals is Goal 2--to achieve a 90 percent graduation rate from the nation's high schools. While there is a lot that we know about what determines whether or not a student will graduate from high school, there's still much to be discovered. A number of avenues open for future research show promise of yielding the information we need to reach the graduation rate goal. The ideal objective is for all students to possess not just the diploma but also the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary for participating productively in society. Many graduates presently do not. Still others drop out of high school. In both instances, students have disengaged themselves from learning. We must recapture the interest of disaffected students if we are going to boost the high school completion rate to 90 percent.

Policymakers often ask: How many additional students would have to complete high school each year in order to achieve a 90 percent graduation rate? In 1992, there would have had to be approximately 440,000 more high school completers to meet the 90 percent goal for 19- and 20-year-olds (table 1).

-------------------------------------------------------------------                   |                         |     Increase in the                   |                         |    number of 19- to 19- to 20-year-old|                         |  20-year-olds who had     age group     |     Completion rate     | completed high school  (in thousands)   |                         |     needed to meet                      |                         |       90% Goal                          |                         |    (in thousands)     -------------------------------------------------------------------       6,559       |          83.3%          |          439         ------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Executive Summary Defining Dropouts: A Statistical Portrait