Abstract
Rumberger (2020) observed that "dropping out of school has economic and social consequences both for dropouts themselves and for the country as a whole" (p. 151). Every year, many Brazilians drop out of school due to work, early pregnancies, marriage, drug consumption, crime, etc. Dropping out of school can occur due to learning challenges, poor attendance, discipline problems, or a lack of access to high school institutions. Dropouts can experience depression and anxiety and are more likely to attempt suicide. The present dissertation includes two different papers about dropouts. The first paper uses fixed effect regression to show the main characteristics of dropouts who both left high school before completing it and registered for the Brazilian National Exam (ENEM). The results demonstrate that dropouts who take the ENEM are males, hail from low-income families, are younger (less than 17 years old), and are less likely to possess computers. When analyzing the 2015 and 2016 data set, which included dropouts who took the ENEM to receive high school certification, the results show that thew are more likely to have dropped out of school during their basic education (1st to 9th grade). In the second paper, I evaluated differences in achievement "between dropout registrants and current students, and dropout registrants and graduates" each comparison using the same data set (ENEM), but restricted to 2015 and 2016, due to the availability of a larger number of predictive variables of dropouts. The results indicate that dropout registrants did worse than all groups in essay writing but performed similarly to current students in math and language in 2016. When comparing the achievement of dropout registrants and graduates, the results show more pronounced differences, but in essay writing, the effect size varied from 0.22SD to 0.35SD.
Degree
PhD
College and Department
David O. McKay School of Education; Educational Inquiry, Measurement, and Evaluation
Rights
https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Miranda, Eveline, "High School Dropouts, Higher Education Dreams, and Achievement: A Six-Year Study of a High-Stakes Test in Brazil" (2022). Theses and Dissertations. 10190.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/10190
Date Submitted
2022-12-12
Document Type
Dissertation
Handle
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd13028
Keywords
dropouts, fixed-effects, higher education access, early identification, multilevel models, Brazil
Language
english