Earning sufficient credits from year to year in middle and high school to advance from grade to grade is a significant predictor of graduating.

According to “Course Credit Accrual and Dropping Out of High School, by Student Characteristics” a report from National Center for Education Statistics (NCES, 2009). The researchers used data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to examine the number of credits earned by high school students and the relationship between course credit accrual and dropping out. Findings include:

  • High school dropouts earned fewer credits than did on-time graduates within each year of high school, and the cumulative course credit accrual gap increased with each subsequent year.
  • The pattern of dropouts earning fewer credits than on-time graduates remained across all examined student and school characteristics (student sex, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, school location, and sophomore class size).
  • The size of the cumulative course credit accrual gap between on-time graduates and dropouts varied within academic years for males versus females, Blacks and Hispanics versus Whites, and students attending city high schools versus students attending suburban, town, and rural high schools.

View and print the NCES report.

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