Do High School Exit Exams Influence Educational Attainment or Labor Market Performance? (Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2006)

This report examines the influence of exit exams on high school completion and labor market performance. It groups exit exams into two categories: more and less difficult. More difficult exams are those that test material at the ninth-grade level or higher. The study found that:

• based on data from the 2000 Census, exit exams led to particularly large increases in the dropout rates of black students. In the states with the most difficult exit exams, black males are 7.3 percent more likely to drop out of school;

• exit exams seemed to increase the likelihood of high school completion among Hispanics; and, 

• exit exams do not seem to affect high school completion for white females, though they sharply reduce the completion rates among white males.

The report includes a case study of Minnesota's recently launched exit exam, which was found to increase the dropout rate in urban and high-poverty school districts as well as in those with a relatively large concentration of minority students. This increased risk of dropping out was concentrated among 12th-grade students. They also found that Minnesota's exit exam lowered the dropout rate in low-poverty and suburban school districts, especially among students in the tenth and eleventh grades.