High School Drop Outs

Question

A Social Work MA student researching high school drop out rates saw this
article in the Globe and Mail, and we are trying to determine what "new
data" might have prompted it:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090209.NATS09-1/TPStory/National

When I search "high school dropout" on the Statscan website, I do not
find anything more recent than 2006.  The article implies that such data
are collected annually.   IF they are, we would be interested to acquire
them.

Answer

1) See
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/051216/dq051216c-eng.htm

It uses Labour force survey data, and
"The high school dropout rate is defined as the proportion of young people
aged 20 to 24 who are not attending school, and who have not graduated
from high school"

2)That 2005 study mentioned above below is referenced by a Canadian Council
on Learning (CCL) study that was released on February 4, 2009.  The CCL
study draws on Statistics Canada and other data, particularly custom
extractions from the 2001 Census and 2004 SLID.  This CCL study is also
mentioned in other, longer news articles similar to the short Globe and Mail
one that you found.  Here is a link to the CCL study:

http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Reports/Other+Reports/20090203CostofDroppingOut.htm

So I suspect that the "new data" is actually the data synthesized in the CCL
report.  I find that newspaper stories are often vague about the exact
source of data and tend to attribute everything to Statistics Canada.  The
Globe and Mail article may be an example of this.

However, I am going to talk to one of the authors of the study
mentioned because he was consulted on the CCL study.  Hopefully he can
provide some insight, or at least confirm that we haven't missed anything.