Over 40 percent of Chicago Public Schools students drop out by age 19, with a slight downward trend across the 1991–1994 cohorts¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2001 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person · overdue for a recheck since 2004: local conditions change quickly

Subclaims¶

q2 i? By fall 2000, 41.8 percent of the 1994 CPS cohort had dropped out, compared with 44.3 percent of the 1991 cohort, showing a slight downward trend. → Elaine Allensworth and John Q. Easton 2001

Evidence¶

Elaine Allensworth and John Q. Easton 2001¶

Elaine Allensworth and John Q. Easton. (2001). Calculating a Cohort Dropout Rate for the Chicago Public Schools: A Technical Research Report. Consortium on Chicago School Research. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/calculating-cohort-dropout-rate-chicago-public-schools

q2 · i? · associational · r2

Cohort analysis of CPS administrative records following students defined by age 13 through age 19. The report states "41.8 percent of the 1994 cohort had dropped out" versus 44.3 percent for the 1991 cohort; no effect size or significance test is printed.

"By the fall of 2000, 41.8 percent of the 1994 cohort had dropped out of school. This compares with a dropout rate of 42.9 percent for the 1993 cohort, 43.6 percent for the 1992 cohort, and 44.3 percent for the 1991 cohort."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Defining dropout cohorts by age 13 rather than by ninth-grade entry avoids composition bias from the CPS promotion policy's grade retentions — related
• The five-year dropout rate for the first cohort fully subject to the CPS promotion policy (1995) continued the slight downward trend, but pre-age-18 patterns do not clearly indicate a change — related
• Dropouts in more recent CPS cohorts left school at earlier grade levels, with a growing share not going beyond ninth grade — related
• Including unverified transfers as dropouts yields dropout rates about 4 percent higher at age 19 and eliminates the downward trend — reports the opposite
• Chicago graduation rates improved steadily since the early 1990s except for the first two cohorts subject to the eighth-grade promotion standard, and age-16 dropout rates declined for the last five years — related
• About 54 percent of Chicago Public Schools students graduated from CPS by age 19 for the 1998 age-13 cohort and by the fourth year for the 1999 freshman cohort — related
• Chicago Public Schools dropout rates remained high, with over 40 percent of students dropping out by age 19 — a broader claim this one bears on
• Graduation rates by age 19 in Chicago varied substantially by race/ethnicity and gender, with African-American boys lowest (39 percent) and Asian girls highest (85 percent) — related
• Graduation by age 18 was slightly higher in later cohorts despite earlier off-schedule status — related
• Of Barton's 81 eighth-grade graduates of 1993, 44 graduated within five years, 26 dropped out, and 10 left CPS — related
• The report's dropout and graduate percentages are calculated differently from CPS's and are therefore somewhat smaller than CPS numbers — related
• The Illinois State Board of Education's graduation-rate method overestimates graduation rates where large numbers of students transfer between schools, as in Chicago — related
• Systemwide CPS first-year on-track percentages ranged from 44.8 to 50.8 across the 1997–2001 cohorts — related