Data Source

"EDFacts: Beginning with the 2010-2011 school year, states must submit cohort graduation rates to the federal government. These data have been made available to the public on EDFacts. Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rates at the Local Education Agency (school district) level from EDFacts data were used for all states except Hawaii, where school-level data were used."

Measure Methods

• "High School Graduation is a percentage: High School Graduation is the percentage of the ninth-grade cohort that graduates from high school in four years."

• "The method for calculating High School Graduation has changed: Please note this measure was modified in 2011, 2012, 2014, 2019, 2020, and 2021 Rankings. In 2019, the priority was to use state-specific data for states with many missing counties in the national dataset. Estimates from this year are from the national data source alone and should be compared with caution to previous years. When comparing across years, ensure that the source remained the same."

• "Measure limitations: High School Graduation has several limitations. First, there are differences across states and even schools in determining whether a student is a transfer or a dropout, and this can substantially affect graduation rates because dropouts are still included in a graduation cohort, but transfers are not. Second, there are different rules applied to certain student groups (e.g., incarcerated students, special needs students) at some schools; for instance, they may be excluded from the cohort, included in the cohort but given longer to graduate, or included in the cohort with no special considerations. Third, some states include online schools, but students do not necessarily reside in the same county as the online school’s mailing address, so there are problems with assigning an online school to a specific county. Finally, schools with a large proportion of their cohort as transfer students generally have a disadvantage regarding graduation rates, as these students may be lacking requirements for their new school."

• "Numerator: The numerator is the number of cohort members who earned a regular high school diploma by the end of the school year."

• "Denominator: The denominator is the number of first-time 9th graders four years before graduation, plus students who transferred in, minus students who transferred out, emigrated, or died during school years."

• "Can This Measure Be Used to Track Progress?: County Health Rankings High School Graduation data should not be used to measure progress. Local data sources are more appropriate for measuring progress given the substantial measure changes over time."

Source: High School Graduation* | County Health Rankings & Roadmaps

References

• Heckman JJ, Humphries JE, Veramendi G, Urzua SS. Education, health and wages. National Bureau of Economic Research. 2014: Working Paper No. 19971.

• Zajacova A, Everett BG. The nonequivalent health of high school equivalents. Social Sciences Quarterly. 2014; 95:221-238.

• Ma J, Pender M, Welch M. Education pays 2016. The College Board. 2016.

• French MT, Homer JF, Popovici I, Robins PK. What you do in high school matters: High school GPA, educational attainment, and labor market earnings as a young adult. Eastern Economic Journal. 2015; 41:370-386.

• Murnane, RL. U.S. high school graduation rates: Patterns and explanations. Nat Bur Econ Research. 2013: Working Paper No. 18701.