30% don't graduate on time, study finds

High school students unprepared for college, poised for low income

By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff, 9/17/2003

Almost one-third of American high school students do not graduate on time, leading to a "lifetime of lower income and limited opportunities," a study to be released today asserts.

Examining federal data for the class of 2001, researchers from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, estimated that as many as 1 million high school students -- or about 30 percent -- do not graduate four years after entering ninth grade.

In Massachusetts, about 27 percent of students graduated in four years -- slightly better than the national average, but placing the state 25th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Massachusetts has one of the country's highest graduation rates for black students, of about 65 percent, according to the report, "Public High School Graduation and College Readiness Rates in the United States." But only about 49 percent of Latino students graduate in four years in the Bay State, compared with 78 percent of white students and 76 percent of Asians.

High school graduation rates will take on added significance as the federal government starts to use them, in addition to test scores, as a yardstick of school performance. Under the No Child Left Behind law, schools and districts that do not show enough progress in graduating more students on time will face sanctions, including using some of their federal money to bus students to better-performing campuses at a parent's request.

The study's findings reflect the Massachusetts graduation rate before the MCAS test became a graduation requirement, starting with the class of 2003. Although a state report last year predicted that just 71 percent of seniors in that class would graduate, Department of Education spokeswoman Heidi B. Perlman said yesterday that officials think the rate will rise for future classes.

"We expect graduation rates at the very least to stay where they are, if not increase, because of all the extra help students are getting" to pass MCAS, Perlman said.

Massachusetts will first report a four-year graduation rate in 2004-05. That's when the state's new data-collection system, which began to track individual students in 2001, will be able to show whether each freshman graduated on time.

The study's lead author, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jay P. Greene, argues that including graduation rates in No Child Left Behind ratings will push schools to graduate more students in four years.

Greene calculated state and national graduation rates by comparing the number of diplomas awarded with the ninth-grade enrollment four years earlier. Students who do not earn a diploma on time are less likely to get high-paying jobs or apply to college, he said.

Many students who do not graduate on time take an extra year to finish high school, while others earn a GED or drop out. Greene's analysis adjusts statistically for students who move.

"It's clearly below what we expect from school, and below what we're capable of," Greene said of the national graduation rate.

The US Department of Education has pegged the national graduation rate at more than 86 percent, but Greene said that may be misleading because it includes students who obtain GEDs.

The study also estimates that 32 percent of students nationally graduate high school ready for college-level work -- meaning they have taken classes that match what college admissions offices require and can read at the "basic" level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national test.

Broken down by race, about 37 percent of white students and 38 percent of Asians are college-ready, compared with 20 percent of blacks and 16 percent of Latinos, the study found.

Greene argues that the key to improving opportunities for blacks and Latinos is not by affirmative action policies that ease their admission to colleges, but by improving the nation's public schools.