I survey the evidence on patterns in U.S. high school graduation rates over the period 1970-2010 and report the results of new research conducted to fill in holes in the evidence. I begin by pointing out the strengths and limitations of existing data sources. I then describe six striking...

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth for the years 1979-91, the authors investigate how school dropouts' acquisition of a General Educational Development certificate (GED) affected the probability that they would obtain training, post-secondary education, or military...

<BR>This paper examines the value of the GED credential and the conventional high school diploma in explaining the earnings of 27-year-old males in the early 1990s. The data base is the High School and Beyond sophomore cohort. <BR>We replicate the basic findings of prior studies that implicitly assume...

The labor-market payoff to workers with associate degrees in healthcare and STEM occupations is very high in Massachusetts. We examine whether this induced a growing proportion of students in MA community colleges (MACCs) to earn an associate degree (AD) in one of these fields. We do this by...