PROCEDIMIENTO DE LIXIVIACION DE PRECIPITACION SINTETICA

Easy Way Outs

There are several important considerations regarding the early graduates sample. My lit- erature review led me to conceptualize the existence of several potential early graduate

groups. The first conceptual delineation is between those students receiving a GED and those receiving a diploma. The early graduates with a GED are considered to be the easy way out group of early graduates since they pursued the “easier” way of completing high school (i.e., not having to be physically present or follow traditional school processes and procedures). Ideally, the ELS data would include a variable for early graduates who finished high school early be- cause they thought it would be easier to get a GED than a diploma. This question, unfortunately, was not asked of early graduates. The use of the ELS’s “earned a GED” variable to indicate easy way outs is the best theoretically-grounded option available, and this results in 135 easy way out early graduates within my sample.

There are 353 early graduates who earned a diploma in my sample. An additional 38 students were initially dropped from this group because of missing data4. Upon merging theoret- ical expectations from the literature review with actual data from the Education Longitudinal Study, it appears that three distinct groups exist among early graduates with a diploma: early es- capees, earnest achievers and early passives.

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Early Escapees

Early escapees are those students who sought to graduate early because of feelings of alienation stemming from frequent disruptions (e.g., physical threats, actual violence, gangs, theft, drugs being offered, etc) or stressors (e.g., pregnancy, desire to move away). This early escapee group of early graduates is challenging to conceptually screen for because of the wide range of possible reasons that could compel a student to seek an early “breakout” from high school. I have screened all early graduates with a diploma for their self-reporting (in the base year survey) or in first follow-up survey of personally experiencing specific types of disruptions5 that were tracked in the ELS survey. Most of these potential early escapee motivators reflect concerns about safety, violence and bad behavior, while a few are more aligned with boredom, a wish to relocate or family concerns.

My analysis of disruption counts among all surveyed students resulted in an average of 3.18 disruptions per student, with a standard deviation of 2.74 disruptions. I then classified all early graduates with a diploma who reported experiencing six or more disruptions (i.e., more than one standard deviation above the mean) as an early escapee since they are more likely to become alienated from school and seek an early release, regardless of their GPA.

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Disruptions that I screened for include if a student “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with the any of the fol- lowing variables; does not feel safe in school, disruptions get in the way of learning, misbehaving stu-

dents often get away with it, there are gangs in school, racial ethnic groups often fight, had something stolen at school or if a student reported any of the following experiences “once or twice” or “more than

twice”; had something stolen at school, someone threatened to hurt 10th

grader at school, got into a

physical fight at school, someone hit 10th grader, someone forces money/things from 10th grader, someone

damaged belongings, someone bullied or picked on 10th grader, had something stolen at school, someone

offered drugs at school, someone threatened to hurt student at school, someone hit student, graduated early because bored with high school, graduated early to move to another city, or graduated early to start

Earnest Achievers

Earnest achievers are relatively high performing (i.e., have a GPA higher than 3.0) early graduates with a diploma who reported normal levels of disruptions (i.e., five or less, which is within one standard deviation of the mean). There are 67 earnest achievers in my sample. Data limitations do not permit for a clear assessment of whether or not an earnest achiever has clearly indicated that they want an early start on college or other forms of additional education, so I have utilized a combined approach of screening for relatively low levels of disruptions and relatively high academic performance (as indicated by GPA levels of above 3.0) as a strong proxy for rec- ognizing earnest achiever early graduates.

Early Passives

Early passives are an unexpected (based on the prior literature) but important (based on my review of the actual ELS data) "all other" group of early graduates with a diploma who are not particularly strong academic performers (i.e., their GPA is 3.0 or less) and are experiencing normal levels (five or fewer) of disruption. There are 187 early passives in my sample.

The relatively large number of “early passive” students in the sample led me to perform a cluster analysis in SPSS to determine if distinct student segments might be identified within the early passive group. I utilized the hierarchical clustering option within SPSS and I did not know beforehand how many potential student segments might emerge. The variables of focus for this procedure were each students’ (1) grade point average and (2) number of reported disruptions. This process resulted in a series of potential solutions, with each solution then requiring subjec- tive interpretation to identify the best solution. The SPSS hierarchical clustering process pro- duced results for a two cluster, three cluster and four cluster solution. Both the three cluster and four cluster options had mixed intuitive appeal after interpreting the results, and both suffered

from small samples in at least one of the derived clusters. In the end, the two cluster solution had both the best intuitive appeal and threshold sample sizes among all the options.

The results of the two cluster solution (shown in Table 3.2) suggest that early passive early graduates can be decomposed into two distinct groups, (1) early graduate "underachieving passives” (students with a below average GPA of 2.0 or less and a low level of reported disrup- tions) and (2) early graduate “mediocre passives" (students with an average GPA of 2.0 or high- er, but below the 3.0 threshold for earnest achievers and a noticeable yet normal level of disrup- tions). The underachieving passives group includes 108 students who have an average GPA

Table 3.2 ANOVA Results for the Two-Cluster Solution for Early Passives Variables

of Focus

Group Type Sum of Squares

Degrees of Free-

dom

Mean Square F Sig.

GPA Between Groups 5.71 1 5.71 18.39 .000

Within Groups 57.48 185 .311 Total 63.19 186 Sum of Disruptions Between Groups 337.12 1 337.12 406.13 .000 Within Groups 153.57 185 0.83 Total 490.68 186

of 1.85 (with a standard deviation of .611) and an average disruption count of 1.37 (with a stand- ard deviation of 1.01). These students are performing at or below a “C” grade average yet have relatively low reported disruptions. The second group, which I am calling mediocre passives, includes 79 students who have a slightly higher yet mediocre GPA of 2.21 (with a standard devi- ation of .475) and report experiencing an average of 4.09 disruptions (with a standard deviation of .745). More specific details about these two clusters are offered in Table 3.2, with the results indicating that the two clusters are significantly different from each other in terms of grade point average and levels of reported disruptions.

The inclusion of the early graduate underachieving passives and mediocre passives brings the total of early graduate groups to five. Table 3.3 offers an overview and comparison of these five groups.

Table 3.3 Conceptualized High School Early Graduate Segments in the ELS Sample Early Graduate Exiter Group Sample Count GED or Diploma Reported Disruptions GPA Comment

Easy Way Outs (i.e., Total Number of Early Graduates with a GED)

135 GED Not a crite- rion

Not a criterion

GED may be seen as easiest way out of high school

Early Escapees 99 Diploma High Not a

criterion

High disruptions, regard- less of GPA

Earnest Achievers 67 Diploma Low High High GPS, low disrup-

tion students Underachieving

Passives

108 Diploma Low Low Underperforming stu-

dents with low disrup- tion

Mediocre Passives 79 Diploma Average Average Average performing stu- dents with average dis- ruption

Total Number of Early Graduates with a Di- ploma

353 Either Includes all early gradu-

ate groups except easy way outs

Total Number of Early Graduates

488 Either Includes all early gradu-

ate groups