Graduation Rates and Contributing Factors in CTE Students

Graduation Rates of CTE Students dataset was obtained from standardized assessment data from the Mississippi Career Planning Assessment System, Version 2 (MS-CPAS2) for the students in the cohort. The assessment is administered on behalf of the MDE by the RCU. The two datasets were combined internally by the Business Applications Systems department of the RCU for the purposes of clarity and efficiency.

For calculating graduation rate, we needed basic information such as the number of students in the cohort, the number of students who graduated on time (within four years), and the number of students migrating from or into other schools, districts, and states. Students comprising the cohort used in this study started 9th grade in the 2007-2008 academic year for the first time. For this study, we had access to a filtered view of the Mississippi Student Information System administered by the MDE. Our view was limited to only students who took CTE secondary courses from 2003 to present. It also did not include the students’ total academic course records.

The lack of availability of the full student dataset made determining which students should be included in the 2007-2008 cohort difficult. Thus, we needed an alternative way to determine the students who were included in the cohort.

To determine the 2007-2008 cohort, we first chose students who took CTE courses during the given year from our dataset. Next, we chose 9th grade students among those who took CTE courses in the 2007-2008 school year. We repeated this selection process for 10th grade students among students who took CTE courses in the 2008-2009 academic year, 11th grade students among students who took CTE courses in the 2009-2010 academic year, and 12th grade students among students who took CTE courses in the 2010-2011 academic year. Among that list of students, we removed data anomalies. Examples of these anomalies are students with grade level