New Mexico High School Graduation Rates by County, New Mexico, Four Year Cohort, 2018-2019
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Why Is This Important?
Education level is strongly related to health status for a variety of reasons. Education is associated with better earning potential and higher income which enables purchase of better housing in safer neighborhoods, healthier food, health insurance coverage and more timely medical care. Persons who have clear goals and a sense of control over their own lives tend to have both a higher education level and better health (Lachman & Weaner, 1998). Short-term health problems associated with not graduating from high school include substance use, pregnancy, and psychological, emotional, and behavioral problems. For adolescent females, teenage pregnancy is the leading reason for not graduating; an estimated 30% - 40% of female teenaged dropouts are mothers. Early parenting also affects young males who leave school to support a child. Mental illness and emotional disturbance also account for a significant proportion of students who don't graduate (Freudenberg & Ruglis, 2007).
New Mexico High School Graduation Rates by County, New Mexico, Four Year Cohort, 2018-2019
Definition
The rate of students who began high school as a 9th grader and who then proceeded to graduate from high school 4 years later. In the case of transfers between school districts, a student's outcome was proportionally distributed among all school districts contributing to that student's outcome. The New Mexico Public Education Department calls this the Shared Accountability model. These rates are calculated for students who graduated 4 years after entering high school as freshmen, called "4-year cohort". All students entering New Mexico public high schools, in any grade, become members of an on-time cohort. Graduates are students who graduate with a standard diploma. Students who get a GED or a Certificate of Completion are considered "non-graduates" in this computation of the graduation rate. All schools with any grade 9, 10, 11, or 12 receive a rate.
Data Notes
Includes schools governed by public school districts (including district-authorized charters) as well as state-authorized charters. County-level data were calculated by identifying and summarizing records from all schools located within each county, based only on those schools' physical locations (disregarding their school-district affiliation). The compiled county data therefore may not accurately reflect the actual county of residence of a given school's students. County graduation rates were calculated by multiplying the graduation rates of each high school by the number of enrolled 9th-grade students in each school for the school year four years prior (to estimate the ninth grade cohort for that graduation rate). The numerators (number of graduating students) and denominators (number of 9th-grade students) were then summed by county. Schools that did not report a graduation rate were excluded from county totals and rates. Schools with graduation rates that were suppressed byData Source
National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education and the Institute of Education Sciences(https://nces.ed.gov)
How the Measure is Calculated
| Numerator: | The number of students that graduated from high school on time in a given year. This number is the total of all students and student fractions (in the case of transfers) for high school graduates, aggregated for each school district. |
| Denominator: | The total number of students. This number is a count of all students enrolled for any period of time during the 4 year period ending in the year shown. |
Health Topic Pages Related to: Public Education - High School Graduation Rate
Community Health Resources and Links
- Healthy People 2030 Website
- The Guide to Community Preventive Services
- U.S. Preventive Services Task Force
- County Health Rankings
- Kaiser Family Foundation's StateHealthFacts
Medical literature can be queried at the PubMed website.