High school is an important milestone in life. People with high school diplomas earn significantly more than those without. There have been many controversies over the true high school graduation rate in the United States. Researchers present rates as low as 65 percent and as high as 90 percent. The first essay is a comprehensive review of the debate, discuss shortcomings of current methods, and propose new methods that address the shortcomings. The essay concludes that current methods that are widely used are flawed. High school graduation rates in the United States are well above 80 percent, with high racial disparity. The graduation rates for white and Asian students are around 85 percent, and the rates for Hispanic and African American students are around 70–80 percent.

The second essay investigates the movements of the high school graduation rate in the United States over the last 20 years, and provides projection for year 2015. The Current Population Survey data were used to describe the trend in high school graduation rate. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data were used to model the associations between high school graduation and individual and family characteristics. Two different approaches: a logistic regression and Generalized Boosted Modeling were used to perform out-of-sample projections with American Community Survey data. The essay concludes that the overall high school graduation rate has been increasing slightly and will likely remain stable above 80 percent by 2015.

The third essay uses the propensity score method to investigate the impact of early adolescent romance on academic performance in terms of high school graduation, college preparation, and college enrollment, controlling for gender, race, mother education, family income, student ability, indicator of intact family, age at the start of 9th grade, indicator of neighborhood gang-related activities, school type, and urbanicity. Main findings of this chapter highlight mixed effects of early adolescent romance. Moderate dating shows a positive impact on college readiness and college enrollment. Serious dating and early sex show significant negative impacts on graduation and college enrollment.