The Relationship Between Socioeconomic and the High School Graduation Rate in the U.S

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS LEVELS AND HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES
The Relationship between Socioeconomic Status Levels and High School Graduation Rate among High School Students in the United States
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Abstract
This research examines the influence of socioeconomic status on graduation rates in high schools in New York. The study pays more attention to reveal the contributions that families, schools, teachers, and students themselves make to various critical educational outcomes, such as test scores and graduation rates. This study considers the relationship between socioeconomic composition and a variety of critical educational measures. It seeks a correlation between the graduation rates and the socioeconomic status in schools in New York. The researcher used data on three high schools based in New York to show how families' socioeconomic status can help explain variations in students' performance and the overall graduation rates.
The study hypothesizes that socioeconomic status levels impact the high school graduation rate. Results demonstrate that socioeconomic status is responsible for a large portion of the differences in graduation rates outcomes in high schools in New York. The methodology used in this research can be reused easily in other states and applied to different control measures and choices of the outcome. These results will add to a body of evidence that socioeconomic status determines the performance of high school students and the graduation rates in general.
Introduction
Socioeconomic status is a serious matter that has affected the productivity and quality of education in the US. A significant effect of failing to graduate from high school is that it may lead to poverty continuation. Even though graduation rates in high schools have increased throughout the US as a result of some education reforms, students in low socioeconomic status indicate a low performance and a high dropout rate in comparison to their schoolmates who come from families with a higher socioeconomic status (Howard & Madison-Harris, 2011). This stat indicates that the lack of education directly relates to poverty (Awan & Waqas, 2011).
The teenagers' graduation rate from high school in the United States rose from 6 percent to 80 percent from 1900 to 1970 ("Graduations on the Rise.", 2013). Graduate from high school is significant to every student. The rate of graduation from high school is a measuring tool for the skill level of American society's future workforce and the health of American society (Heckman & Lafontaine, 2010). In the early 20th century, high school graduation rates in the United States were consistently low. However, in the 2018-2019 academic years, the rate of high school graduation in the United States was 88% which is a representation of the proportion of scholars who graduated four years later after starting high school in ninth grade ("See high school graduation rates by state," 2021). Government policies and school efforts have aided the steady rise in high school graduation rates. Socioeconomic status has been linked to how adolescents perform academically. Socioeconomic status is an indicator of a person's or a family's overall social status and is one of the most widely studied disciplines in the social sciences (White, 2013). It is mainly measured along with education, occupational status, and income. In general, many studies have revealed the relationship between academic performance and the socioeconomic status of adolescents.
Students who go through more schooling may have a more clear picture of how much getting a quality education can do for them. This insight can have a similar effect as a parent having to infer that they will not succeed. Students in lower socioeconomic status understand how important making some money to make it through is as they live in the low socioeconomic status and want a good life for themselves. If this is true, then more factors contribute to why so many scholars are dropping out of school while others perform poorly (Rouse, C. E., & Barrow, L. 2006).
The relationships between socioeconomic status and high school students' academic performance have been further studied, and evidence of how family socioeconomic status affects high students' graduation has been revealed. Conger and Conger, 2002 demonstrated that family economic hardship negatively affected parent relationships, parenting behavior, and emotion. Families with low socioeconomic status levels will affect children's growth to a certain extent. Children growing up in families with high socioeconomic status, compared to those growing up in families with low socioeconomic status, demonstrated an increased health risk which affects how they perform at school (Coleman, 2016).
Notably, students from families with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to fail to graduate than their affluent peers because children who grow up in such conditions encounter more adverse challenges (BattinPearson, 2002). The challenges lead to fewer opportunities, fewer role models for building networks of trust, and more pressure to secure income as soon as possible (Raffo et al., 2009). Similarly, lack of societal and parental support leads to low socioeconomic students having a lower graduation rate. This rate shows that there is a relationship between students' graduation rate and their socioeconomic status.
It has been revealed that socioeconomic status relates to students' academic achievement. Therefore, this study will focus on the impact of family socioeconomic status levels of American high school students on their high school graduation rate. The study hypothesizes that socioeconomic status levels impact the high school graduation rate. The study compares the graduation rates of students from poor socioeconomic status and students from the high socioeconomic status from three different types of high schools. It focuses on students who are about to graduate. The implication of this study is to show how social inequality has a profound effect on the students; it is crucial to narrow the development gap between social stratifications.
Methods
1. Participants
The study concentrates on the relationship between the socioeconomic composition and graduation rate in New York, to be specific. In this context, the participants in this study are graduating students from the City of New York. In New York, the researcher prefers three high schools over the others: a private high school, a public high school, and Christ Church High School, among others. The 25 boys and 25 girls participating in the survey will be chosen at random using probability sampling. The age range will be 17 to 18 because this is the average age of most students graduating from high school. The participants will be required to provide their demographic information such as their age, sex, parents' education level, occupation or job, and annual household income through questionnaires. The information provided will be used to define students' family socioeconomic levels. Because this is a retrospective study, probability sampling is the preferred method of collecting data. Therefore, this study will use high schools graduation rates in New York State for 2018-2019 as the data source. The parental agreement shall be obtained following the ethical standards and the Code of Ethics of the organization. In addition, a permit to conduct the study will need to be obtained, and the consent of the School Principal will be required. A copy of the permit will be supplied to the advisors of the graduating students after it has been approved.
2. Measure
Specifically, this study aims to examine the socioeconomic status and the graduation rate of high school students in the New York relationship. According to the American Psychological Association (2021), an online dictionary in Psychology, individual or group social standing or class is described as an individual's social position or class. Most of the time, it is determined by a mix of education, income, and profession. This study defines socioeconomic status as the family's social standing relative to the graduating high school students in New York. Although there is no consensus in society on measuring socioeconomic status, experts agree that its stability should include occupation, income, and education (Bradley and Corwyn, 2002).
Therefore, this research will use parents' occupation, educational level, and family income to estimate students' family socioeconomic status. The educational level of the students' parents will be measured using a seven-point Likert scale. 1 = grade 3 or below, 2 = grades 4 to 6, 3 = middle school, 4 = high school, 5 = two-year college, 6 = four-year undergraduate, 7 = graduate school or higher (Treiman, 1976). The occupation of parents was measured by the Treiman Occupational Prestige Scale, and the higher the number, the higher the prestige of the occupation.
Adapting an online document, a survey questionnaire on socioeconomic status, to assess parents' occupation will be used to do this. The questionnaire will determine the following: if their parents are employed or not; who earns income to support the family; how many hours they work; whether they work full time or part-time; whether disabled or retired and not looking for work; whether currently enrolled in school; and whether they have any other financial resources to support the family. To determine the family income, the pupils will indicate their family income by selecting from one of the scales on the Likert 10-point scale, which includes the following options: Numbers 1 and 2 indicate annual incomes less than $10,000; numbers 3 and 4 indicate annual incomes between $10,000 and $20,000; numbers 5 and 6 indicate annual incomes between $20,000 and $30,000. Numbers 7 through 10 indicate annual incomes greater than $500,000, while number 10 indicates annual incomes greater than $500,000 (per year).
In terms of the dependent variable, the graduation rate is the ratio of the total number of enrolled students in Grade 12 to the total number of graduates. Therefore, the graduation rate in this study is...