Tackling the High School Dropout Rate in Colorado

Presenter(s)

Cameron Steenblock

Abstract or Description

Each year, Colorado residents pay around 7 billion dollars in taxes that fund public secondary middle schools and high schools across the state. Despite the state dropout rate of 1.8% , there are some schools in Colorado that have high dropout rates, with some even well above the country average of 5.3%. The Colorado Department of Education has collected data on the dropout rates of schools in each county, including the number of students who dropped out by race, sex, and other factors, such as if the student has a disability or if the student has limited English. The National Center for Education Statistics has a dataset as well, which details the expenditure for school per pupil for each county. Our goal is to use these two datasets to create a linear model that will show the factors that have the strongest relationship with the total dropout rate for each school. Our findings will hopefully help us inform schools which groups of students need more attention, which in turn will lower the dropout rate.