Fixing and Preventing the Dropout Rate

Rachel Grizer

Fixing and Preventing the Dropout Rate

The rate at which students in the United States drop out of school has remained alarmingly high for many years. In fact, it has been estimated that one in eight children never graduate from high school in their lifetime, and that 1.2 million students drop out of school every year. According to Sandra Christenson and Martha Thurlow (2004), dropout statistics are especially distressing since jobs that pay “living wages” and benefits have essentially disappeared for young adults without a high school diploma. Those who do manage to find a job will earn $9,245 less per year than their counterparts who have obtained a high school diploma. Numerous programs have been established throughout the country in light of this epidemic that include counseling services, mentor­ing programs, tutoring, attendance monitoring, and after-school programs.

In the article School Dropouts: Prevention Considerations, Interventions, and Challenges, Christenson and Thurlow discuss various intervention programs that have been established to help prevent students from dropping out of school. Students may begin to consider dropping out of school at a very young age; therefore interventions to prevent this should begin at an early age and should remain in effect throughout the high school years. This article maintains that “supporting students to help them meet the academic standards of their schools, as well as the underlying social and behavioral standards” will increase students’ engagement and enthusiasm for school, which will encourage them to stay in school. When students are engaged in school they will become academically and socially successful throughout their education and therefore more likely to graduate.

In the article School Dropouts/Truancy, Frances Prevatt discusses the factors that predict students who will drop out of school, programs that have been established to help prevent dropping out, and other factors that contribute to the high dropout rate in this country. Prevatt describes students with disruptive and aggressive behavior and achieved low academic grades as early as first grade were more likely to drop out of school before graduating. In addition, unpopular students and students with low self-esteem were more likely to drop out of school. This article also described the factors associated with a high likelihood of graduating from high school. These factors include the existence of strong relationships that are capable of overriding the peer pressure to drop out of school, the ability to comply with school regulations, and a higher level of parent educational attainment.

In the article Increasing Rates of School Completion: Moving from Policy and Research to Practice, the authors discuss the issues surrounding school dropout rates and interventions to help increase graduation rates. This article asserts that a review of school performance, including behavior, attendance, and academics, during the elementary years can identify future dropouts fairly reliably. Since the decision to drop out takes many years, early intervention is the best approach to encourage students to graduate. The authors of this article give various components of intervention programs that have been shown to have some validity through a review of numerous studies. The components that seem to have the most positive outcomes in reducing the dropout rate include a combination of counseling, smaller and more personal classrooms, vocational training, and personal and family related support systems.

The article, Can Early Intervention Prevent High School Dropout? Evidence from the Chicago Child-Parent Centers discusses an intervention program that was implemented in twenty Chicago school systems. The Chicago Child-Parent Center and Expansion Program offered a government-funded educational intervention program for preschool through third grade in twenty of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods. This article sought to determine if the students who received those intervention programs as children would be more likely to graduate high school. It was established that participation in the intervention program was associated with a seven to eight percentage point reduction in the probability of dropout. It was established that the involvement of parents in schooling and avoidance of frequently changing schools are also important predictors of high school completion.