Impact of Race and Ethnicity on High School Graduation Rates

Abstract

Graduation and dropout rates have become an important indicator of long-term economic and career success. While there have been nationwide improvements in these rates, gaps persist correlating to race and ethnicity, and cannot be explained solely with reference to family income. African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Pacific Islanders consistently graduate in smaller proportions than whites and Asian Americans do. These disparities carry over into college readiness and graduation rates.

Overview

Over the last half of the twentieth century, graduation from high school increasingly became an important prerequisite to obtaining a well-paying job and long-term financial security. This became even more true as college enrollment more than doubled in that period, as the job market continued to shift away from agriculture and manufacturing towards white-collar and service work; by the twenty-first century, more than half of jobs required a college degree, and the majority of the remainder required a high school diploma. For these reasons, inequities in graduation rates contribute to inequities in later economic outcomes. That is, inequities are seen to persist over generations, as one of the key indicators of the probability of high school graduation is whether both of a student's parents graduated.

The racial gap in high school graduation rates is significant; while about a third of public high school students overall fail to graduate, the dropout rate is significantly higher for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. Furthermore, dropout rates are significantly higher among students attending schools in (de facto) racially segregated school districts. Minority students underperform in terms of college and career readiness (CCR) as well, a measure that takes into account a variety of indicators correlated with success in both the workforce and higher education. In the ACT's 2016 report on readiness, nearly half (49 percent) of white students met a minimum of three CCR benchmarks, compared to 23 percent of Hispanic students and 11 percent of African American students (Martinez et. al., 2017).

The racial gap in dropout rates has narrowed in the twenty-first century, as Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and African Americans have all seen their dropout rates fall at a faster rate than white or Asian Americans. This is true for other marginalized groups of students as well, such as low-income students overall, students with disabilities, and students with limited English proficiency. White and Asian American students, however, continue to enjoy the greatest success, and white students in particular do so independent of economic indicators.

While dropout and graduation rates vary from state to state, these racial gaps persist on a state-by-state basis as well. For example, in 2011–2012, Nevada had the lowest graduation rate in the country, at 63 percent overall; Nevada's racial gap (72 percent for white Americans, 48 percent for African Americans) was similar to Mississippi (75 percent overall, 82 percent for white Americans, 69 percent for African Americans) or Tennessee (87 percent overall, 91 percent for white Americans, 79 percent for African Americans).

Further Insights

There are three main measures used in discussing dropout rates: the event dropout rate, which measures the percentage of students who drop out of high school in a given year; the status dropout rate, which measures the percentage of children age 15-24 who are not currently enrolled in school and have not completed high school; and the cohort dropout rate, which measures the dropout rate for a given age-selected group over time. Somewhat different figures result depending on which measure is referenced.

Most measures, including those used for comparisons between different countries, look at the 15-24 age group, which accounts for most delayed graduations. Furthermore, graduation rates are not precisely the same as any of the above dropout rates. Public schools use a standardized graduation rate mandated by the Department of Education's No Child Left Behind program, consisting of the percentage of students who graduate from high school with a diploma in the standard number of years. Some of the notable ways this rate differs from dropout rates are that dropout rates do not count GED-earners as dropouts (provided they earn their GED before age 25), and they allow a longer span of time for high school to be completed before considering a student dropped out. The measure is primarily relevant to the cohort dropout rate. Where possible, this article uses dropout rates rather than the official NCLB graduation rate, because of those considerations.

According to the National Center for Education Research (NCER), the status dropout rate in the United States dropped, from 1990 to 2013, from 12 percent to 7 percent overall. However, while declining dropouts were seen in all races and ethnicities, a significant gap remained. The Hispanic status dropout rate fell from 32 percent to 12 percent; the African American status dropout rate fell from 13 percent to 7 percent; while the white status dropout rate fell from 9 percent to 5 percent (NCER, 2017). Overall, Hispanic students saw the greatest decline in their dropout rate, yet in 2013 still had a dropout rate higher than whites in 1990. The NCER provided status dropout rates for 2012, but not trend data for the period, for Asians, 3 percent; Pacific Islanders, 9 percent; Native Americans and Alaska Natives, 13 percent; and multiracial students, 6 percent.

Race and ethnicity are complicated categories, and the groupings used in federal data and other sources can obfuscate important differences among subgroups. For example, while Asian Americans overall experience significant educational and economic success, this is primarily true of Chinese and Japanese Americans, whereas Americans whose heritage originates in Southeast Asia are more likely to be first- or second-generation Americans, less likely to be wealthy, and experience less educational success. The difference in terms of advantages between first- and second-generation Americans and Americans whose families have been settled in the United States for multiple generations also accounts for the wide variation in dropout rates of Hispanic subgroups.

In 2015, when the overall Hispanic status dropout rate was 9.9 percent, Cuban Americans (which includes a substantial middle and upper class) had a 4.1 percent dropout rate, roughly equivalent to the white dropout rate, while Guatemalan and Honduran Americans, groups that include large numbers of recent immigrants, refugees, and lower-income families, had dropout rates of 22.8 percent and 18.9 percent, respectively (NCER, 2017). A similar disparity is seen in the Asian American status dropout data. While Asian Americans overall had a 2.4 percent status dropout rate in 2015, groups with a long history in the United States—which therefore include many families with established ties, cultural literacy and competence dealing with educational institutions, and a greater degree of wealth—had low dropout rates: Chinese Americans, 1.5 percent; Filipino Americans, 1.9 percent; Japanese Americans, 1.6 percent; and Korean Americans, 1.4 percent; and Indian Americans, 1.7 percent. In contrast, Cambodian Americans had a 9.4 percent dropout rate; Laotian Americans, a 6.9 percent rate; and Vietnamese Americans, 2.8 percent. Burmese Americans, a group that includes many recent refugees from the turmoil in Myanmar, experienced a 23.8 percent status dropout rate (NCER, 2017).

The correlation of years of school completed with dropout rate has varied over time. From 2000 to 2015, the percentage of status dropouts who had completed 11-12 years of school climbed from 40 percent to 50 percent, while dropout rates for those who had completed 9 or 10 years of school fluctuated but ended the period roughly where they had begun (15 percent and 22 percent, respectively) and those dropping out before 9 years of schooling fell from over 20 percent to just over 10 percent.

Issues

Poverty is one source of the impact of race and ethnicity on high school graduation rates, since it disproportionately affects African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans. Between one fifth and one quarter of students in poverty fail to graduate high school. Poverty is implicated in numerous ways. Poorer students are more likely to attend poorly funded schools. They are less likely to have access to extracurricular education, from tutoring to afterschool, summer, or spring break programs. They typically face lower expectations: from their families, from their schools, from their peers, and from their community. They are less likely to be equipped to navigate the various challenges of school, from seeking out the resources they need to know what options might be available to them. While private organizations and public agencies have sought to intervene specifically to assist students in poverty and from marginalized groups, those interventions have not been sufficient to solve the problem, and in some cases help individual students without helping overall populations.

Income correlates strongly to status dropout rates. From 1990 to 2013, students from the lowest income quartile experienced the highest dropout rate, the middle low quartile the next highest, the middle high quartile the next highest, and the highest quartile the lowest, in every year. Furthermore, though dropout rates declined in that time for all quartiles, at no time did the dropout rate for any of the four quartiles drop to a level equal or lower to a dropout rate found in any higher income quartile at any point in that period (NCER, 2017). In other words, while the middle low quartile, for example, dropped over that twenty-three-year period, it still remained higher than the level at which the middle high quartile began.

The correlation of race/ethnicity to graduation rates persists independent from economic factors and many other indicators. For example, third-grade reading proficiency is often examined as an indicator of graduation rates. While low-proficiency readers have lower graduation rates than proficient readers, the graduation rates of African American and Hispanic low-proficiency readers lag behind those of white low-proficiency readers.

The economic benefits of either a high school diploma or a college degree are lesser for African American, Hispanic, or Native American students than they are for white students (Zhan, 2014). This must in part be ascribed to institutional biases that lead to minority applicants being less likely to be hired for jobs, offered promotions, considered for leadership roles, approved for loans, and other circumstances in which an individual or institutional gatekeeper selects to whom advantages and economic benefits are distributed.

If the racial gap in dropout/graduation rates cannot be explained entirely with reference to economics or the recent immigrant status of some subgroups, those biases offer themselves as the most likely explanation as well. Historical racism has led to a disparity in opportunities that goes deeper than income differences; predominantly white schools are more likely to have better resources than predominantly non-white schools, and family and community expectations vary.

Furthermore, an increasingly vital area of study focuses on the impact of cultural and racial biases on the part of teachers, administrators, and staff on students of color. Microaggressions—interactions or behaviors that subtly, and sometimes unintentionally, convey hostility or other negativity—impact a child's success in school. Microaggressions come in a vast variety: A teacher may be more likely to call on white students, which makes non-white students feel less included, while also reinforcing the teacher's positive feelings about the white students; a teacher may express difficulty with or even make fun of "ethnic" names of students of color, making the student feel belittled; a teacher may penalize spelling and grammar mistakes associated with ESL speakers or African American English more than they penalize the mistakes made by white students. It is important to stress that these microaggressions and their effects do not require that the teacher be "racist," in the sense of feeling conscious personal animosity toward non-white students. It can be understood as a problem caused by simply not trying hard enough to include minority students, or not paying enough attention to one's behaviors.

Racial disparities exist in college graduation rates as well. While the college graduation rate in general is lower than many might expect (about 60 percent of college students graduate within six years), the dropout rate for Hispanic college students is half, and for African Americans, it is 60 percent (Zhan, 2014). The factors influencing college graduation rates are somewhat different; the role of economic barriers is especially large, since public high school is free, while even public universities cost more than the average young person can afford even with a part-time job, and working a full-time job either disqualifies one from financial aid or spreads a student too thin between work and study commitments.

While financial assistance is available, two factors interfere with its usefulness: first, the costs of college have risen at a rate vastly out of proportion with inflation, wages, and loans; second, there is a negative correlation between significant student loan debt (over $10,000 for undergraduates) and graduation success for racial and ethnic minorities (Zhan, 2014). While minority students who only require small to moderate loans experience increased success—presumably because of the alleviated or at least postponed financial burden, or because the students able to obtain loans are those who have the greatest ability and engagement with their education—and white students experience greater success with any loan amount, high levels of student loan debt for minority students may result in greater pressures on the student.

Terms & Concepts

College and Career Readiness (CCR): A measure used by government, nonprofit, and education industry groups that takes various indicators and benchmarks into account in order to quantify a student population's preparedness for either higher education or the workforce.

Cohort Dropout Rate: A measurement of the proportion of students in a given temporally defined group (such as the freshman class of 1999) who eventually drop out of high school without graduating.

Event Dropout Rate: The proportion of students in a given set of students (e.g., a school, a demographic) who drop out of high school in a single year.

Poverty: A state of economic scarcity; while absolute poverty refers to a complete inability to meet one's basic needs, most discussions of poverty center on relative poverty, the inability to meet a minimum standard of living enjoyed by most of the country. Though there is an official "poverty line" used by the federal government for various purposes, for practical purposes the income and wealth levels that constitute poverty vary wildly from state to state and city to city, because of variations in the cost of living.

Readiness: A student's preparedness for higher education, especially college or university; while readiness encompasses many dimensions, including social skills, emotional intelligence, and financial resources, most studies of readiness focus on quantifiable benchmarks of academic achievement.

Status Dropout Rate: The proportion of high school aged children who are not currently enrolled in and have not completed high school.

Bibliography

Bowman, N., & Toms Smedley, C. (2013). The forgotten minority: Examining religious affiliation and university satisfaction. Higher Education, 65(6), 745–760. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=87498160&site=ehost-live

Gelbgiser, D., & Alon, S. (2016). Math-oriented fields of study and the race gap in graduation likelihoods at elite colleges. Social Science Research, 58, 150–164.

Gelbgiser, D., & Alon, S. (2011). Intersections of gender and race and the race gap in college grades and graduation likelihoods. Conference Papers — American Sociological Association, 1758.

McNeil, M. (2012). Graduation rates latest waiver flash point. Education Week, 32(10), 18–19. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=83107855&site=ehost-live

Min, Z. (2014). Education loans and college graduation: Differences by race/ethnicity. Social Development Issues, 36(2), 17–34.

Report: In 20 years, event dropout rate unchanged, status dropouts fell. (2011). What's Working, 3(1), 8–9. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=58589688&site=ehost-live

Severtis, J. E., & Christie-Mizell, C. A. (2007). Greek-letter membership and college graduation: Does race matter? Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, 34(3), 95–117. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=26163992&site=ehost-live

National Center for Education Statistics. (2017). Digest of Education Statistics. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education.

Tracey, T. J., & Sedlacek, W. E. (1987). Prediction of college graduation using noncognitive variables by race. Measurement & Evaluation in Counseling & Development, 19177–184. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=508259942&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Covarrubias, A., Nava, P. E., Lara, A., Burciaga, R., Vélez, V. N., & Solorzano, D. G. (2018). Critical race quantitative intersections: A testimonio analysis. Race, Ethnicity & Education, 21(2), 253–273. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=126995516&site=ehost-live

González-Espada, W. W., & Carrasquillo, R. R. (2017). Puerto Rico: Race, ethnicity, culture, and physics teaching. Physics Teacher, 55(6), 334–337. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=124824995&site=ehost-live

López, N., Javier Chavez, M., Erwin, C., & Binder, M. (2018). Making the invisible visible: Advancing quantitative methods in higher education using critical race theory and intersectionality. Race, Ethnicity & Education, 21(2), 180–207. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=126995653&site=ehost-live

Mwangi, C. C., & English, S. S. (2017). Being black (and) immigrant students: When race, ethnicity, and nativity collide. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 19(2), 100–130. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=124009103&site=ehost-live

State-by-State Review of High School Graduation Rates by Race. (2009). Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (64), 63. Retrieved November 1, 2017, from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=44487410&site=ehost-live