Texas public schools are losing one out of five students.
Each fall, IDRA releases its attrition study. Attrition rates are an indicator of a school’s holding power, or the ability to keep students enrolled in school and learning until they graduate. Key findings from the 2020-21 study show the following.
- Texas is failing to graduate one out of every five students – which translates to losing 10 students per hour.
- The statewide attrition rate is 19%, meaning 19% of the freshman class of 2017-18 left school prior to graduating in the 2020-21 school year.
- At this rate, Texas will not reach universal high school education for another almost two decades in 2039.
- Schools are twice as likely to lose Latino students and Black students as white students before they graduate.
- In the last 33 years, Texas schools have lost a cumulative total of more than 4 million students from public high school enrollment prior to graduation.
- 125 counties had improved attrition rates since last year, 85 counties had higher attrition rates and 19 counties remained the same.
It doesn’t have to be this way. This infographic highlights key findings from the study and points to steps we can take to graduate more students.
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