Examining the Importance of School Factors for Persisting Students

• In Event: The Promise of Persistence: Expanding the Evidence on High School Completion

Abstract

Objective:
While research has begun to highlight persisting students’ likelihood of high school graduation (Uretsky & Henneberger, 2020), the role that school characteristics play in this process warrants systematic attention. In this paper, we answer the following question: What is the relationship between school characteristics and six-year graduation rates for persisting students?

Theoretical framework:
We draw on Rumberger’s (2011) framework, which highlights four school features as central to shaping students’ experiences and outcomes:
--Composition: This feature has the strongest relationship with student achievement. Among persisting students, those who attend schools with greater proportions of female students, peers who experienced homelessness, and students who have previously dropped out of school have lower likelihoods of graduating (Uretsky & Henneberger, 2020);
--Resources: Rumberger (2011) argues for a broader definition of resources, moving beyond the traditional focus on fiscal resources (e.g., Greenwald et al., 1996; Hedges et al., 1994), to include school staff. Currently, no studies have examined the relationship between school resources and persisters’ outcomes;
--Structure: Findings on the influence of school structure on high school completion are mixed. For persisting students, attending an alternative high school reduced the likelihood of earning a high school diploma but attending a charter school was positively associated with high school completion (Uretsky & Henneberger, 2020); and
--Practices: Linking to the broader literature on trust in schools (e.g., Bryk & Schneider, 2002), scholars have focused on the positive influence of strong relationships among students and adults. Qualitative research on persisting students suggests that student-school staff relationships are particularly important, especially to access the academic and social-emotional support needed to graduate (Hill & Mirakhur, 2018).
By studying these features together, we hope to illuminate how to develop supports for students who have passed the four-year mark of high school.

Methods and data sources:
We use descriptive and inferential statistical analyses of administrative and survey data from the NYC Department of Education. We focus on the most recent cohort of 9th grade students for whom we have six years of data: The 67,652 students who began high school in fall of 2012. Following Uretsky and Henneberger (2020), we use a multilevel generalized linear modeling approach to understand the relationship between school characteristics and persisting students’ six-year graduation outcomes.

Results:
Overall, we find that two school features are associated with persisting students’ graduation rates: School composition (particularly the socioeconomic characteristics of schools) and school practices. In particular, we find that persisting students’ odds of graduating in six years are negatively associated with the proportion of the student body qualifying for free- or reduced-price meals and positively associated with an index we created to measure strong student-adult relationships.

Significance:
By providing nuanced information about school features related to higher graduation rates for persisting students, this work will contribute to developing better strategies and interventions to support them in gaining a high school credential. We hope this work can inform the creation of educational settings that are responsive to and supportive of this vulnerable population of young adults.

Authors

• Zitsi Mirakhur, University of Kentucky

• Kathryn Hill, Research Alliance for New York City Schools

• Edgar Rivera-Cash, Research Alliance for New York City Schools