Is the high school dropout rate an increasing function of the proportion of the population in the US cities that is Hispanic? Exploratory evidence

ABSTRACT

This empirical note seeks to provide preliminary insights into factors that may have influenced the high school dropout rate in the US cities. For some 300-plus cities for the year 2011, OLS estimates reveal that the dropout rate is a decreasing function of both the per cent of the population that is Hispanic and per pupil public education spending at the elementary and secondary levels. In addition, the estimates find that the dropout rate is an increasing function of the per cent of the population that consisted of families with children and that was classified as being at or below the poverty level and the per cent of the population aged 25 years and older that did not have a high school diploma.

KEYWORDS:

• High school dropout rate
• poverty
• per pupil public education spending
• Hispanic population

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ A significant spending gap also exists within the same school district, largely due to the differences in salaries paid to experienced teachers in ‘low-need’ schools and to new teachers in ‘high-need’ schools (Cebula, Mixon, and Montez 2015).

² Arguably, given the negative implications of recessions, especially deeper and longer recessions, for property values and hence property tax revenues, a greater effort to fund this increased per pupil spending through alternative tax sources should be undertaken. Only 41 out of 363 US cities did not use local taxes to fund public schools, and they are located in eight states: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia; among the remaining cities, an average of 75% of total local revenue arises from local taxes (US Census Bureau 2010).