In the past year alone, various education stakeholders have published numerous reports and studies on the topic of graduation rates—many of them debating and discussing the methods listed above. A summary of recently published research and findings follows.

• Diplomas Count: An Essential Guide to Graduation Policy and Rates (Education Week, June 2006)

• Rethinking High School Graduation Rates & Trends (Economic Policy Institute, Mishel and Roy, March 2006) Mishel and Roy have engaged in several debates with other researchers about their new research and contend that the dropout rate has been greatly exaggerated. Table 1 presents a side-by-side comparison of the Mishel/Roy methodology with the Swanson method.

• The Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate for Public High Schools from the Common Core of Data: School Years 2002-03 and 2003-04 (U.S. Department of Education/NCES, June 2006)

• Dropout Rates in the United States: 2002 and 2003 (NCES, 2006)

• The National Governors Association's (NGA) Compact on State High School Graduation Data (NGA, July 2005)

• Who's Counted? Who's Counting? Understanding High School Graduation Rates (the Alliance for Excellent Education, June 2006)

• State-Level High School Completion Rates: Concepts, Measures, and Trends (John Warren, University of Minnesota, June 2006)

In addition to these reports and studies, several others have recently come out that discuss exit exams in relation to graduation rates:

• State High School Exit Exams: States Try Harder, But Gaps Persist (Center on Education Policy (CEP), 2005) and State High School Exit Exams: A Challenging Year (CEP, 2006)
  
  
• Do High School Exit Exams Influence Educational Attainment or Labor Market Performance? (Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2006)
  
  
• High School Exit Examinations and State-Level Completion and GED Rates, 1975-2002 (John Warren, Krista Jenkins and Rachael Kulick, Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2006)