The current system of documenting dropout rates is outlined in the California Basic Educational Data System (CBEDS) Manual. One day each year (called Information Day), personnel in schools, districts, and county offices of education are requested to provide information regarding school staff, enrollment, and accountability indicators. On this day, students are considered dropouts if they fall into any of the following categories: 1) they were enrolled at some time during the school year and left school prior to completing that school year, 2) they completed the previous school year but did not begin attending the next grade level, or 3) they remain enrolled but are no longer attending school.[i]
The current system is subject to many threats to the validity of published district-level dropout rates. These threats to validity may lead districts to overestimate or underestimate local dropout rates, and they may also produce an inaccurate picture of student enrollment status. The following are examples of threats to validity that are commonly experienced in large urban school districts.
Dropout measures are in essence a snapshot of student enrollment status on a given day in the school year. Therefore, one major shortcoming of annually published dropout rates is their inability to capture student migration. Since school districts are required to report dropout rates on Information Day each year, students who drop out of the same school multiple times may be double-counted in dropout calculations. For example, students who are reported as dropouts on Information Day in a given year may return to the same school, move to another school or school district, or enroll in an alternative program to continue their education and then subsequently drop out before Information Day the following year. For this reason, published dropout rates are problematic measures of actual student status particularly in urban districts, which tend to have higher rates of student mobility..
Further complicating the district-level data system are students who are counted as dropouts on Information Day, but later enroll in private schools, in charter schools, or in another school district. Districts are responsible for providing adequate documentation on whether these “no-show” students are indeed dropouts or are instead merely attending a school other than the school they were expected to attend. This, of course, is particularly challenging considering the fact that the process of navigating different data systems to fulfill reporting requirements is very labor-intensive. In some cases dropout rates are also inflated when students move out of the country and enroll in school elsewhere without notifying the district. In other cases dropout rates are underestimated when students report enrolling in another school district but do not actually attend school.
The number of students pursuing alternative education programs presents additional complications in tracking student enrollment, as these students may not be fully incorporated in school district data systems. Within each school district there are also students who do not finish high school in the traditional 4-year period, opting to leave high school early by passing the California High School Proficiency Examination (CHSPE) or receiving a California High School Equivalency Certificate by passing the General Educational Development (GED) Test. In addition, districts are also responsible for tracking the progress of students who are under the age of 21 and enrolled in an adult education program.
[i] California Department of Education (2006). California Basic Educational Data System (CBEDS), available at www.cde.ca.gov.