Breaking Down the Dropout Statistics

In this 2016 CoffeED conversation, John McLaughlin of ChanceLight Behavioral Health and Education discusses the dropout figures of the time and the part suspensions play in disengaging students from school. The section below, added in 2026, sets out what current federal data and later research say about why students drop out and what school leaders can do about it.

John McLaughlin, Ph.D. joined me for coffee to discuss recent news and research pertaining to the ever-challenging dropout issue facing public education in the U.S. McLaughlin breaks down his interpretations of the findings and sheds light on the issue of suspensions and the role they place in disengaging students from the school community. We also learn more about John’s affinity for tea as opposed to coffee too!

For additional context on the dropout issue check out our CoffeED episodes with Bill Milliken of Communities in Schools and a follow-up conversation with Milliken, Dan Domenech of the AASA and Mark Claypool of ChanceLight Behavioral Health and Education and McLaughlin’s co-author of We’re In This Together: Public-Private Partnerships in Special and At-Risk Education

Interview

John M. McLaughlin, Ph.D., directs the Research & Analytics unit of ChanceLight Behavioral Health and Education

Dr. McLaughlin holds a BA, MA and Ph.D. from Peabody College of Vanderbilt University, the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota respectively.

He was a certified geography teacher and secondary school administrator in Tennessee where he served as a teacher. He then spent the last ten years of his work in that state as principal in an alternative high school.In 1977, he founded Benton Hall Academy, a school in the Nashville area for students in need of a small and caring environment.From 1993 to 2000 he published The Education Industry Report, a monthly summary of investment activity in the education arena.

He has been interviewed by virtually every major newspaper, magazine and broadcast media in the U.S. for his insights on the interface of public education and free enterprise. He has been published several times throughout his career. His most recent writing includes an article, Alternative Education’s Impact on Office Disciplinary Referrals (with Eva Gillham) in The Clearing House, September 2012; a book of fiction, The Last Year of the Season, 2014, North Star Press; and We’re In This Together: Public-Private Partnerships in Special and At-Risk Education (with Mark K. Claypool), 2015, Rowman & Littlefield Education.

Why students drop out: what current data and research say

When John McLaughlin discussed dropout statistics in 2016, the national picture was still improving year by year. The question of why students drop out has not become simpler since then, but the numbers are easier to read. The National Center for Education Statistics reports an adjusted cohort graduation rate of 87 percent for U.S. public high school students in 2021-22. That rate follows a group of ninth graders for four years and counts the share who graduate on time. It also shows that the average hides large differences: 94 percent for Asian and Pacific Islander students, 90 percent for White students, 83 percent for Hispanic students, 81 percent for Black students and 74 percent for American Indian and Alaska Native students.

A graduation rate counts only the outcome. It does not explain the reasons behind it, and the reasons rarely come from one source. Researchers who study dropping out usually describe a gradual process of disengagement that can include missed days, falling grades, a sense of not belonging and, in many cases, discipline. As McLaughlin explains above, suspensions deserve particular attention because they remove a student from the classroom at the point where the student may already be drifting away from school.

What studies find about suspensions and graduation

The best-known evidence comes from California. In a 2017 study by Russell Rumberger and Daniel Losen for the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, researchers followed a cohort of tenth graders through high school. Students who had been suspended graduated at a rate of 60 percent, compared with 83 percent for students who had not. After the authors controlled for other predictors of dropping out, suspension alone was associated with a drop of 6.5 percentage points in graduation. This was an observational study of one cohort in one state, so it shows a strong association and an estimate of its size. It cannot prove that every suspension causes a student to leave school, because students who are suspended often face other difficulties at the same time.

Other studies point in the same direction while adding caution. A 2020 study in Youth & Society followed more than 2,000 students in 26 schools and found that suspension was linked to more later misbehavior and further school sanctions, whether the school had an inclusive or a punitive climate. A 2021 analysis of Texas data in the Texas Education Review found that ninth graders assigned to disciplinary alternative programs had lower four-year graduation rates, and that Black and Latinx students were assigned at disproportionate rates. Not every study agrees. A 2024 doctoral dissertation on urban districts in Louisiana found that exclusionary discipline did not significantly predict graduation for African American students there. A dissertation is not reviewed in the way a journal article is, but the finding is a reminder that local conditions matter and that a leader should look at the district’s own data before drawing conclusions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds the student’s view. In its 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey results, Black students were more likely than White and Hispanic students to report unfair discipline, and the survey linked unfair discipline with poor mental health and with suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The survey records what students report and does not measure any one school’s practice, but it suggests that how discipline is experienced can matter as much as how often it is used.

What school and district leaders can decide

McLaughlin raised suspension as a lever that schools control. Several practical steps follow from the research above.

• Look at the district’s own suspension and graduation numbers together, by student group, before changing a policy. The national pattern may or may not match the local one.
• Identify students who are suspended in ninth grade and arrange a return plan with a named adult, because the first year of high school is a point where many students fall behind.
• Keep the student connected to coursework during any removal, so that days out of class do not turn into credits lost.
• Ask students how discipline is experienced, using a short anonymous survey, and compare the answers with the written policy.
• Treat fewer suspensions as one part of a plan that also includes support such as counseling, mentoring and academic help, since the studies above describe an association with suspension and do not show that reducing it alone raises graduation.

Parents can ask the school for the discipline policy in writing, request a meeting after any suspension, and ask what work the student will receive. For earlier background, the CoffeED conversations with Bill Milliken of Communities in Schools and with Milliken, Dan Domenech and Mark Claypool cover the history of the dropout problem and the recovery programs that followed.

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