National
Promoting Power
Promoting power compares the number of seniors enrolled in a high school to the number of freshmen enrolled in the high school three years earlier. It provides a measure of how efficiently and effectively high schools promote their students from grade to grade. Promoting power is also a good indicator of high schools that have both high and low graduation rates. It is very likely that high schools which have 60% or fewer seniors than freshmen three years earlier will have unacceptably low graduation rates by state and national standards.
The graph below shows the promoting power for the Nation's high schools.* The tables that follow show how promoting power varies across the Nation's high schools by free lunch level, minority concentration, location, and school size. For more information on Promoting Power and national and regional trends see Locating the Dropout Crisis by Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters, Johns Hopkins University.
*Promoting Power data is based on a three year average for the classes of 2005, 2006, and 2007.
