This infographic from IDRA’s 40th annual Texas Public School Attrition Study highlights statewide attrition trends, racial disparities and long-term student outcomes in Texas public schools. The 2024-25 data show the largest single-year increase in attrition rates in four decades.
Texas high 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 2024-25 study show the following.
- Texas is failing to graduate one out of every five high school students, meaning one in five freshmen disappeared by their senior year.
- The statewide attrition rate in 2024-25 jumped three points to 21%.
- Texas public high schools lost 95,984 students from the 2021-22 freshman class in 2024-25. Latino students accounted for 66% of the students lost to attrition.
- Texas schools have lost a cumulative total of more than 4.3 million students from public high school enrollment since 1985-86.
- Schools’ attention to dropout prevention, however, has been showing promise. From the initial study 40 years ago to the present, the attrition rate gap between Latino students and their white peers has been cut in half from 18 percentage points to 9 percentage points.
- Studies show that the strongest school-related predictor of dropping out is poor academic performance. Students perform better in school if they feel welcome, safe and secure.
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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