The Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepares an annual report on graduates and dropouts in Texas public secondary schools. This report includes state summaries of the annual dropout rate, longitudinal graduation and dropout rates, and state attrition rates. In addition to statewide statistics, the report provides historical information about dropout…

Issues and considerations likely to be confronted in designing and constructing longitudinal institutional databases or studies are examined, including operational definitions of retention and attrition. The intent is to reduce current limitations in dropout research. (MSE)

Dallas school district attempted to determine whereabouts of students who did not return to school in fall. Found a large portion of "no-show" students matriculating elsewhere. Previously, these students would have been classified as dropouts and used to determine the dropout rate. The new accounting procedure reduced the annual dropout rate from…

The U.S. Department of Education and various education commentators maintain that dropout rates have been decreasing for African-Americans and the school population as a whole. This paper presents evidence that dropout rates may be going up rather than down and identifies reasons for the conflicting data. The reasons include varied definitions of…

Some issues in defining dropouts and reporting information about them are explored, with reference to the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey of the National Center for Education Statistics. There has not been any uniform national count of how many students leave school, and no commonly accepted definition has been developed that allows a number to…

This study updates and adds to data presented in a March 1986 study on the dropout problem in Boston (Massachusetts) Public Schools. The current study has the following four major parts: (1) updates to student loss data for the entire 1985-86 school year; (2) demographic studies of dropouts for that period: analyses by gender, race, grade,…

The project described in this report was piloted at Florida Community College during fall 1985 to review policies and practices that can facilitate the retention of students, to propose a system of data collection and dissemination designed to provide routine, useful information about the retention of students, and to establish communications…

Techniques for conducting student-attrition studies using the Student-Outcomes Information Service (SOIS) are outlined. General concepts to effectively guide an institutional research effort are discussed, with attention to better defining student attrition and a summary of results of recent research on the reasons why students withdraw from…

Arguing that retention research requires a sound theoretical framework and that retention planning takes place within a sociopolitical context, this paper presents an overview of the requirements and process of student retention research. Part I examines the role of research in a college's retention effort and establishes the general requirements…

In 1988, a National Dropout Statistics Task Force (comprised of representatives from 27 states, 3 U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia) was created to work with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to develop procedures for uniform counting of dropouts and dropout rate reporting. A standard definition was constructed for…

A model for the identification and analysis of student attrition within the North Carolina community college system was tested in 1980-1981.The three institutions selected to conduct the study--Beaufort County Community College, Edgecombe Technical College, and Nash Technical Institute (BEN)--named the project the BEN Student Retention Research…

Tools and methods designed to assist colleges in analyzing and managing student attrition are described in this manual. The proposed strategies are intended to help the individual college identify patterns and causes of attrition and to establish reasonable goals and means for reducing attrition. The manual consists of five parts. Part I provides…

Student and institutional characteristics related to college freshman persistence were studied. Persistence was examined for 5 institutions (5,950 students) at 4 points in time: end of first term, reenrollment in the spring, end of spring term, and reenrollment in the fall of the sophomore year. Data from a variety of sources were used, and…

In March, 1980, a project was undertaken to develop a model for continued identification and analysis of attrition factors in the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS). Specifically, the project was designed to define attrition and distinguish dropouts from other non-returning students; develop and validate instruments for collecting…

To make educational assessments and comparisons meaningful, dropout data must be collected according to the same definitions, by the same procedures, and over the same time periods. A 31-state pilot project represents an effort by the National Center for Education Statistics to standardize data collection about high school completion. (SLD)