A Recommended Approach to Providing High School Dropout and Completion Rates at the State Level

This report presents a possible approach to providing high school dropout and completion rates at the state level using data from the Common Core of Data (CCD) collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The CCD is a national database of public elementary and secondary schools and school districts. The two goals of this study are 1) Evaluate the quality of dropout data in the CCD to determine whether it is feasible to compensate for inconsistencies in states' reporting practices, thereby providing a comparable CCD dropout rate for more states then is now possible, and 2) Explore two methods of calculating a high school completion rate using the CCD, and provide an annual completion rate by state.

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