High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 2007

This report builds upon a series of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports on high school dropout, completion, and graduation rates that began in 1988. The report includes discussions of many rates used to study how students complete or fail to complete high school. It presents estimates of rates for 2007 and provides data about trends in dropout and completion rates over the last three and a half decades (1972-2007) along with more recent estimates of on-time graduation.

Among findings in the report was that among reporting states in 2006, the averaged freshman graduation rate (AFGR) was 73.2 percent. The report also shows that students living in low-income families were approximately 10 times more likely to drop out of high school between 2006 and 2007 than were students living in high-income families. In October 2007, approximately 3.3 million civilian noninstitutionalized 16- through 24-year-olds were not enrolled in high school and had not earned a high school diploma or alternative credential.

PreK-3rd Research and Evaluation Small Grants Program

The Foundation for Child Development (FCD) announces a request for proposals for its PreK-3rd Research and Evaluation Small Grants Program. A maximum of two awards of up to $50,000 each will be awarded to researchers proposing to use one or more datasets from the PreK-3rd Data Resource Center. The deadline for proposals is November 2, 2009.

The goal of this project is to inform the Foundation for Child Development's PreK-3rd initiative and build the research field by facilitating the analysis of rich, complex, longitudinal datasets that contain a wide range of variables on the child, family, school, and neighborhood. The Web site disseminates datasets and user guides developed to provide researchers with detailed guidance in creating their own extract datasets.