Early Prediction for Graduation of Private High School Students with Machine Learning Approach

Abstract

Graduation rates indicate school success. Predicting student graduation helps schools identify students in danger of dropping out and intervene early to enhance academic performance. It can also assist policymakers create graduation and dropout prevention initiatives. However, based on a literature search, predicting student graduation rates from admission test scores is difficult. School grades are a better predictor of timely tertiary graduation than acceptance test scores because college success requires cognitive abilities and self-regulation competencies, which are better indexed by school grades. Self-efficacy, school academic culture, and future expectations can also affect student graduation rates. Finally, the selective admissions modality needs to be refined. This study aims to (1) predict private high school graduation with eight algorithms: Random tree, Naïve Bayes Multinomial, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbor, Ada Boost, Multilayer perceptron, Logistic regression, and (2) compare the performance of the eight algorithms. According to research, the Random tree, Naïve Bayes Multinomial, Random forest (RF), and Ada boost algorithms all perform at 99.49% for the first aim. For the second objective, the Random Tree approach outperforms other algorithms in Accuracy (99.49%), Precision (100%), F-Measure (99.74%), and consumption time (0 seconds). Therefore, the Random tree algorithm outperforms others. This research contributes in two ways: scientifically by testing eight algorithms—Random tree, Naïve Bayes Multinomial, Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random forest (RF), K-Nearest Neighbor, Ada Boost, Multilayer perceptron, and Logistic regression—to predict private high school graduation, and secondly by recommending school administrators to develop a selective enrollment model.