High School Dropouts and Stopouts: Demographic Backgrounds, Academic Experiences, Engagement, and School Characteristics

The high school dropout problem continues to be a serious concern for secondary education in the United States. Some dropouts fail to ever return to school. Others however, do return after extended absences. These returning students, typically referred to as stopouts, may be quite different from dropouts who fail to return. In these Web Tables, the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) base-year and first follow-up surveys are used to examine both stopouts and dropouts. Current dropouts are those students who left school between 2009 and 2012 and neither were enrolled in school nor had earned a high school diploma or an alternative credential at the time of the first follow-up in spring 2012. Stopouts are those students who had experienced at least one 4-week or longer period of time out of high school between 2009 and 2012 but were enrolled in school at the time of the 2012 first follow-up interview. These Web Tables present information on both groups' demographic characteristics, academic experiences, school engagement behaviors, and the characteristics of schools they attended in 9th grade. To provide a context for comparison, all tables also include students who did not drop out of school between grades 9 and 11 (referred to as continuous students).