Over the past two decades our students’ outcomes have consistently lagged behind students’ outcomes in other developed countries. Since the start of the recent economic crisis at the end of 2007, President Obama has acknowledged that educational investment is a key strategy for strengthening the economy. The national high school graduation rate is a statistic of considerable importance as it directly signals a potential pool of candidates for postsecondary education and the quality of our future labor force. However, such an important national statistic varies substantially by researchers who rely on different data sources and definitions. For example, national high school graduation estimates based on the Common Core of Data and the Current Population Survey do not coincide with one another partially due to different assumptions about graduation age. The purpose of this study was to estimate the rate and trends of high school graduation with longitudinal data while accounting for the age at which students earn a high diploma or a GED certification.

Methods

The analysis merged the second wave of the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and its topical module that provided information on respondents’ demographics and educational histories, including the year of high school diploma or GED acquisition and the highest educational level or degree received. A total of 50,679 individuals who were born between 1945 and 1984 were included in the study. All individuals, including those born in 1984, were at least 24 years old at the time of data collection. The sample was divided into eight birth cohorts.

To examine the percentages of respondents who obtained the diploma on time or late, the age at which they obtained a diploma or a GED was observed at age 17, age 18, and between the ages of 19 and 24. Graduation by age 18 was considered to be on-time graduation in this study. Further analyses estimated the percentages of diploma holders by gender, race and ethnicity, nativity, and type of high school.

Findings

The findings indicated that the rate and trends of high school graduation were considerably different depending on the age at which graduation status was measured. The differences were particularly large for racial minorities. Whereas on-time graduation for all students remained below 70% and declined in general over the study period, especially in the post-1970s cohorts, the rate of graduation by age 24 reached nearly 80% and remained relatively stable throughout the cohorts. The latter finding was due primarily to more individuals graduating from high school between the ages of 19 and 24 in recent decades. The finding helps explain the different rates and trends between various national estimates.

Implications

The major findings of the analyses highlight the importance of considering the timing of graduation when measuring the national graduation rate. The national high school graduation crisis misjudges the graduation trend because it is grounded upon the assumption that most students graduate from high school by age 18. More implications are discussed about why students increasingly take more years to graduate.