hypothesis on high school dropouts

Understanding Dropouts: Statistics, Strategies, and High-Stakes Testing (2001)

Chapter: 1. background and context, 1 background and context.

F ailure to complete high school has been recognized as a social problem in the United States for decades and, as discussed below, the individual and social costs of dropping out are considerable. Social scientists, policy makers, journalists, and the public have pondered questions about why students drop out, how many drop out, what happens to dropouts, and how young people might be kept from dropping out. Currently, many voices are arguing about the effects of standards-based reforms and graduation tests on students' decisions to drop out and about which dropout counts are correct. A significant body of research has examined questions about dropouts, and this section of the report provides an overview of current knowledge about these young people. We begin with a look at the history of school completion.

CHANGING EXPECTATIONS FOR STUDENTS

Expectations for the schooling of adolescents in the United States have changed markedly in the past 100 years. Indeed, the very notion of adolescence as a phase of life distinct from both childhood and adulthood came into common parlance only in the first decades of the twentieth century, at roughly the same time that educators began to develop increasingly ambitious goals for the schooling of students beyond the eighth grade ( Education Week, 2000:36). At the turn of the last century, as Sherman Dorn noted in the paper he prepared for the workshop, “fewer than one of every

ten adolescents graduated from high school. Today, roughly three of every four teens can expect to earn a diploma through a regular high school program” (Dorn, 2000:4).

High school in the early part of the century was a growing phenomenon, but it was still made available primarily to middle- and upper-class students and was generally focused on rigorous college preparatory work. At the turn of the century, the lack of a high school diploma did not necessarily deter young people from going on to successful careers in business or politics. As the number of students enrolled in high school grew, from approximately 500,000 in 1900 to 2.4 million in 1920 and then to 6.5 million in 1940, notions of the purpose of postelementary schooling were evolving.

Dorn provided the committee with an overview of trends in graduation rates over the twentieth century, noting three features of the overall trend that stand out: 1 (1) a steady increase in graduation rates throughout the first half of the twentieth century; (2) a decrease around the years during and immediately after the Second World War; (3) a plateau beginning with the cohort of students born during the 1950s. He discussed possible explanations for these changes in school completion rates.

One possible explanation is the influence of changes in the labor market. A number of developments had the effect of excluding increasing numbers of young people from full-time employment in the early decades of the twentieth century, including the mechanization of agriculture, increases in immigration, and the passage of new child labor laws. As teenagers had more difficulty finding work, increasing numbers of them stayed enrolled in school. The dip during the later 1940s is correspondingly explained by the fact that it was not only adult women who moved into the workforce to replace male workers who left employment for military service, but also teenagers of both sexes. The postwar dip and plateau also correlates with the growing availability of part-time employment and other labor opportunities for teenagers, which challenged the perception that completing school was important to financial success.

Dorn describes a pattern in which participation in successive levels of schooling gradually increases until the pressure spills over into the next level. Increasing proportions of the potential student population tend to

1 Dorn based his discussion of the trendlines on the Current Population Survey, census data, and state and district administrative data sources.

participate in schooling to a given level until saturation is reached—that is, until virtually all are enrolled. Expectations regarding participation in the next level then expand, and the pattern is repeated. In the United States, the norm has moved from primary schooling, to the eighth-grade level, and then to high school completion. State laws regarding school enrollment have moved along with these expectations. Currently, most states require that students stay enrolled through the age of 16. The steady increase in high school enrollment during the first half of the century thus reflects the gradual development of the now widely shared conviction that all teenagers should complete high school. Current political discourse reflects a developing expectation that the majority of students will not just complete high school but also participate in some form of higher education.

It was not until the 1960s that dropping out was widely considered a social problem because it was not until midcentury that sufficient percentages of young people were graduating from high school so that those who did not could be viewed as deviating from the norm. Dorn illustrated the views of dropping out that were becoming current in that period with this 1965 quotation from sociologist Lucius Cervantes (quoted in Dorn, 2000:19):

It is from this hard core of dropouts that a high proportion of the gangsters, hoodlums, drug-addicted, government-dependent prone, irresponsible and illegitimate parents of tomorrow will be predictably recruited.

A number of scholars have argued that as enrollments have increased, high schools' missions have evolved. Many jurisdictions responded to the arrival of waves of immigrants by making it more difficult for families to avoid enrolling their children in school, arguing that public schools were the best vehicle for assimilating these new citizens and would-be citizens ( Education Week, 2000:4). As the children of the lower and middle classes entered high school, however, expectations and graduation standards were lowered. Thus, the postwar plateau might also be explained by the notion that, as Dorn put it, “by the 1960s high schools really had succeeded at becoming the prime custodians for adolescents” (Dorn, 2000:10). If high schools were actually providing little benefit for the students on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, according to this reasoning, there was little motivation for increasing the graduation rate from 70 or 80 percent to 100 percent.

Another notable trend was the general decrease in gaps between completion rates for whites and nonwhites and other population subgroups.

Observers have noted that this narrowing of the gap relates to the saturation effect described earlier—completion rates for Hispanics and African Americans have moved up while those for whites have remained level (Cameron and Heckman, 1993a:5). At the same time, however, alternative notions of school completion have proliferated (discussed in greater detail below). Dorn called attention to the fact that in Florida six different types of diplomas are available and that other states have adopted similar means of marking differing levels of achievement. The categories of school completion are not fixed and apparently not of equivalent value; it may be that many minority students who have converted statistically from dropouts to school completers have in fact moved to an in-between status that needs to be better understood. This circumstance significantly complicates the task of statisticians and others who attempt to keep track of students' progress through school. It also complicates policy discussions about social goals for young people, expectations of the education system, and possible solutions to the problem of dropouts.

LOOKING AT DROPOUTS

A recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) shows that five percent of all young adults who were enrolled in grades 10-12 (519,000 of 10,464,000) dropped out of school between October 1998 and October 1999 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2000:iii). That report provides a wealth of other important information, noting, for example, that Hispanic and African American students are significantly more likely than white students to drop out and that students from poor families are far more likely to drop out than are students from nonpoor families. The report provides information on trends in dropout rates over time and comparisons among students by age, racial and ethnic characteristics, and the like.

The statistical information in this and other reports is valuable, but it provides only a snapshot of the situation across the country. General statistical reports are not designed to reveal the effects of particular policies, programs, and educational approaches on particular groups of students, but variations in the numbers suggest possible sources of more detailed understanding. School completion rates reported by states and districts show wide variation, for example, from 74.5 percent for Nevada to 92.9 percent for Maine. The rates at which students complete school vary over time and are different for different population subgroups, regions, and kinds

of schools, and for students who differ in other ways. (The school completion rate is only one of several ways of measuring dropout behavior; see discussion below). The reported data (from NCES) suggest that particular factors are associated with dropping out, such as single-parent homes, teenage pregnancy, history of academic difficulty, and retention in grade. Other researchers have identified specific school factors that are associated with dropping out, discussed below.

The rates can be calculated in different ways, which means that dropout or school completion rates for the same jurisdiction can look very different, depending on which method is used. Indeed, there is no single dropout measure that can be relied on for analysis; there are many rates based on different definitions and measures, collected by different agents for different purposes. The NCES report, for example, opens by presenting two calculations of dropouts, 5 percent and 11 percent, respectively, for slightly different groups, as well as a percentage of school completers, 85.9 percent (2000:iii).

The confusion about counting dropouts is not surprising when one considers the challenges of counting students in different categories. Numerous decisions can drastically affect the count: At what point in the school year should student enrollment be counted? Should it be done at every grade? How long should a student's absence from school be to count as dropping out? What age ranges should be considered? What about private and charter schools and students who are home-schooled? In most school districts and states, significant numbers of students move into and out of their jurisdictions each year, so school careers are difficult to track. Even within a jurisdiction, many students follow irregular pathways that are also difficult to track—they may drop out of school temporarily, perhaps more than once, before either completing or leaving for good. Different jurisdictions face different statistical challenges, depending on the composition of their student populations. Districts with high immigrant populations may have large numbers of young people who arrive with little documentation of their previous schooling, so that determining which among them have completed school is difficult. What students do after dropping out is also highly variable. Alternative educational and vocational programs, which may or may not be accredited means of completing secondary schooling requirements, have proliferated. A significant number of students take the General Educational Development (GED) Test every year; many (but not all) of them receive school completion credentials from their states.

Tracking dropout behavior is clearly messy. In response, statisticians have devised a variety of ways of measuring the behavior: status dropout rates, event dropout rates, school completion rates, and more. Unfortunately, the many measures often lead to confusion or misunderstanding among people trying to use or understand the data. A later section of this report addresses in greater detail some of the reasons why measuring this aspect of student behavior is complicated and describe what is meant by some of the different measures that are available. First, however, it is worth summarizing the general picture of high school dropouts that has emerged from accumulated research. These general observations describe trends that are evident regardless of the method by which dropouts are counted.

WHO DROPS OUT

The overall rate at which students drop out of school has declined gradually in recent decades, but is currently stable. A number of student characteristics have been consistently correlated with dropping out over the past few decades. 2 First and most important, dropping out is significantly more prevalent among Hispanic and African American students, among students in poverty, among students in urban schools, among English-language learners, and among students with disabilities than among those who do not have these characteristics. The characteristics of the students most likely to drop out illustrate one of the keys to understanding the phenomenon: that dropping out is a process that may begin in the early years of elementary school, not an isolated event that occurs during the last few years of high school. The process has been described as one of gradual disengagement from school. The particular stages and influences vary widely, but the discernible pattern is an interaction among characteristics of the family and home environment and characteristics of a student's experience in school.

Family and Home Characteristics

Income In general, students at low income levels are more likely to drop out of school than are those at higher levels. NCES reports that in

2 Data in this section are taken from National Center for Education Statistics (1996, 2000), which are based on the Current Population Survey. The numbers are event dropout rates.

1999 the dropout rate for students whose families were in the lowest 20 percent of income distribution was 11 percent; for students whose families fall in the middle 60 percent it was 5 percent; and for students from families in the top 20 percent it was 2 percent.

Race/Ethnicity Both Hispanic and African American students are more likely to drop out than are white students, with the rate for Hispanic students being consistently the highest. In 1999, 28.6 percent of Hispanic students dropped out of school, compared with 12.6 percent of black students and 7.3 percent of white students. It is important to note that among Hispanic youths, the dropout rate is significantly higher for those who were not born in the United States (44.2%) than for those who were (16.1%). Two important issues relate to this last point: first, a significant number of foreign-born Hispanic young people have never been enrolled in a U.S. school. Second, the majority of those who were never enrolled have been reported as speaking English “not well” or “not at all.” The status of Hispanic young people offers an illustration of the complexities of counting dropouts. Young people who have never been enrolled in a U.S. school but have no diploma typically show up in measures of status dropout rates (people of a certain age who have no diploma) but not in measures of event dropout rates (students enrolled in one grade but not the next who have not received a diploma or been otherwise accounted for). This issue is addressed in greater detail below.

Family Structure Research has shown an increased risk of academic difficulty or dropping out for students who live in single-parent families, those from large families, and those, especially girls, who have become parents themselves. Other factors have been noted as well, such as having parents who have completed fewer years of schooling or who report providing little support for their children's education, such as providing a specific place to study and reading materials.

School-Related Characteristics

History of Poor Academic Performance Not surprisingly, poor grades and test scores are associated with an increased likeliness to drop out, as is enrollment in remedial courses.

Educational Engagement Researchers have used several measures of stu-

dents' educational engagement, including hours of television watched, hours spent on homework, hours spent at paid employment, and frequency of attending class without books and other necessary materials. Each of these factors has been associated with increased likeliness to encounter academic difficulties and to drop out. That is, the more time a student spends at a job or watching television, the more likely he or she is to drop out. Students who spend relatively little time on homework and who are more likely to attend school unprepared are similarly at increased risk of dropping out.

Academic Delay Students who are older than the normal range for the grade in which they are enrolled are significantly more likely to drop out of school than are those who are not. Similarly, students who have received fewer than the required number of academic credits for their grade are more likely to drop out than other students are.

Interactions

Risk factors tend to cluster together and to have cumulative effects. The children of families in poverty, for example, have a greater risk of academic difficulty than do other children, and they are also at greater risk for poor health, early and unwanted pregnancies, and criminal behavior, each of which is associated with an increased risk of dropping out (National Center for Education Statistics, 1996:11). Urban schools and districts consistently report the highest dropout rates; the annual rate for all urban districts currently averages 10 percent, and in many urban districts it is much higher (Balfanz and Legters, 2001:22). Student populations in these districts are affected by the risk factors associated with dropping out, particularly poverty, in greater numbers than are students in other districts.

WHY STUDENTS DROP OUT

Students who have dropped out of school have given three common reasons ( ERIC Digest, 1987:1):

• A dislike of school and a view that school is boring and not relevant to their needs;
• Low academic achievement, poor grades, or academic failure; and
• A need for money and a desire to work full-time.

These responses in no way contradict the statistical portrait of students who drop out in the United States, but they offer a somewhat different perspective from which to consider the many factors that influence students' decisions about school and work. Shifts in the labor market can have profound effects on students' behavior that are evident in national statistics, particularly those that track changes over many years. Scholars have also identified socioeconomic factors that correlate with the likelihood of a student's dropping out. However, each student whose life is captured in dropout statistics is an individual reacting to a unique set of circumstances. The circumstances that cause a particular student to separate from school before completing the requirements for a diploma can rarely be summed up easily, and rarely involve only one factor. Nevertheless, educators and policy makers alike see that dropping out of school diminishes young people's life chances in significant ways, and look for ways to understand both why they do it and how they might be prevented from doing it.

Dropping Out as a Process

Rumberger summarizes a key message from the research on the factors associated with dropping out:

Although dropping out is generally considered a status or educational outcome that can readily be measured at a particular point in time, it is more appropriately viewed as a process of disengagement that occurs over time. And warning signs for students at risk of dropping out often appear in elementary school, providing ample time to intervene (Rumberger, 2000:25).

Beginning with some points that can be difficult to discern in the complex statistics about dropping out, Rumberger noted that the percentage of young people who complete high school through an alternative to the traditional course requirements and diploma (through the GED or a vocational or other alternative) has grown: 4 percent used an alternative means in 1988 while 10 percent did so in 1998—though the calculated school completion rate among 18- to 24-year-olds remained constant at about 85 percent (Rumberger, 2000:7). Several longitudinal studies show that a much larger percentage of students than are captured in event or status dropout calculations drop out of school temporarily for one or more periods during high school. Doing so is associated with later dropping out for good, with a decreased likelihood of enrolling in postsecondary schooling, and with an increased likelihood of unemployment.

Focusing on the process that leads to the ultimate decision to drop out, Rumberger stresses the importance of interaction among a variety of contributing factors: “if many factors contribute to this phenomenon over a long period of time, it is virtually impossible to demonstrate a causal connection between any single factor and the decision to quit school” (Rumberger, 2001:4). Instead, researchers have looked for ways to organize the factors that seem to be predictive of dropping out in ways that can be useful in efforts to intervene and prevent that outcome. As noted above, two basic categories are characteristics of students, their families and their home circumstances, and characteristics of their schooling.

Rumberger pays particular attention to the concept of engagement with school. Absenteeism and discipline problems are strong predictors of dropping out, even for students not experiencing academic difficulties. More subtle indicators of disengagement from school, such as moving from school to school, negative attitude toward school, and minor discipline problems can show up as early as elementary and middle school as predictors of a subsequent decision to drop out. The role of retention in grade is very important in this context:

. . . students who were retained in grades 1 to 8 were four times more likely to drop out between grades 8 and 10 than students who were not retained, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, 8 th grade school performance, and a host of background and school factors (Rumberger, 2000:15).

Rumberger's work confirms other research on family characteristics that are associated with dropping out, particularly the finding that belonging to families lower in socioeconomic status and those headed by a single parent are both risk factors for students. He also looked at research on the role that less concrete factors may play. Stronger relationships between parents and children seem to reduce the risk of dropping out, as does being the child of parents who “monitor and regulate [the child's] activities, provide emotional support, encourage decision-making . . . and are generally more involved in [the child's] schooling” (Rumberger, 2000:17).

At the workshop, David Grissmer touched on some other factors that don't make their way into national statistics but that could play a significant role for many young people. He pointed to studies of hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorder that indicate that while the percentage of all young people affected is small, roughly 5 percent, the percentage of high school dropouts affected is much larger—perhaps as much as 40 percent. He noted that dyslexia, depression, and other cognitive or mental health

problems can have significant effects on students' capacity to learn and flourish in the school environment, but that these situations are often overlooked in statistical analyses.

Schools also play a role in outcomes for students. Rumberger presented data showing that when results are controlled for students' background characteristics, dropout rates for schools still vary widely. Rumberger's (2000) review of the literature on school effects identifies several key findings:

• The social composition of the student body seems to influence student achievement—and affect the dropout rate. That is, students who attend schools with high concentrations of students with characteristics that increase their likelihood of dropping out, but who don't have those characteristics themselves, are nevertheless more likely to drop out. This finding relates to the fact that dropout rates are consistently significantly higher for urban schools and districts than for others (Balfanz and Legters, 2001:1).
• Some studies suggest that school resources can influence the dropout rate through the student-teacher ratio and possibly through teacher quality.
• The climate, policies, and practices of a school may have effects on dropping out. Indicators of the school climate, such as attendance rates and numbers of students enrolled in advanced courses, may be predictive of dropping out. There is some evidence that other factors, such as school size, structure, and governance, may also have effects.

Interventions

A variety of different kinds of evidence point to the importance of early attention to the problems that are associated with subsequent dropping out. The correspondence between the many risk factors that have been enumerated is not, however, either linear or foolproof. Dynarski (2000) notes that despite strong associations between a variety of characteristics and dropping out, using individual risk factors as predictors is tricky: research that has evaluated the predictive value of risk factors has shown that the one “that was best able to predict whether middle school students were dropouts—high absenteeism—correctly identified dropouts only 16 percent of the time” (Dynarski, 2000:9).

A quantitative look at the effectiveness of dropout prevention pro-

grams can seem sobering, but it is important to bear in mind that even a perfectly successful program—one that kept every potential dropout in school—would affect only a small fraction of students. Any program that is an attempt to intervene in time to prevent dropping out must begin with a group of students who share defined risk factors, but of whom only a fraction would actually have dropped out. That is, even among groups of students with many risk factors, the dropout rate rarely goes over approximately 15 percent, and it is only these 15 of 100 students who receive an intervention whose fates could potentially be changed. When resources are limited, correctly identifying the students who will benefit most from intervention (those who are most likely to drop out) is clearly important. However, since many different kinds of factors affect dropout behavior, using them as predictors is not easy. This point is also relevant to Rumberger's point that if numerous factors contribute to a multiyear process of dropping out, isolating a cause or an effective predictor would logically be very difficult.

Though the quantitative evidence of effectiveness is not overwhelming, Dynarski (2000) used the results of a Department of Education study of the effectiveness of dropout prevention programs to provide a description of some of the strategies that seem to work best. Providing individual-level counseling to students emerged as a key tool for changing students' thinking about their education. Another tool was creating smaller school settings, even within a large school, if necessary. Students are more likely to become alienated and disengaged from school in larger settings, and are likely to receive less individualized attention from teachers and staff. 3 Not surprisingly, providing counseling and creating smaller school settings requires more staff, and, in turn, the expenditure of more resources per pupil (Dynarski, 2000).

Others who have explored the effectiveness of dropout prevention programs have come to conclusions that amplify and support Dynarski's findings. McPartland and Jordan (2001) advocate, among other things, that high schools be restructured to provide smaller school settings and to both increase student engagement with school and strengthen students' relationships with school staff. McPartland has also suggested specific supports for students who enter high school unprepared for challenging academic work,

3 The work of Lee and Burkam (2001), Fine (1987), and others on the structure of high schools is relevant to this point.

including extra time to complete courses and remediation outside of school hours.

In summary, the committee finds several important messages in the research on dropout behavior:

• A number of school-related factors, such as high concentrations of low-achieving students, and less-qualified teachers, for example, are associated with higher dropout rates. Other factors, such as small school settings and individualized attention, are associated with lower dropout rates.
• Many aspects of home life and socioeconomic status are associated with dropout behavior.
• Typically, contributing factors interact in a gradual process of disengagement from school over many years.

Conclusion: The committee concludes that identifying students with risk factors early in their careers (preschool through elementary school) and providing them with ongoing support, remediation, and counseling are likely to be the most promising means of encouraging them to stay in school. Using individual risk factors to identify likely dropouts with whom to intervene, particularly among students at the ninth-grade level and beyond, is difficult. Evidence about interventions done at this stage suggests that their effectiveness is limited.

The role played by testing in the nation's public school system has been increasing steadily—and growing more complicated—for more than 20 years. The Committee on Educational Excellence and Testing Equity (CEETE) was formed to monitor the effects of education reform, particularly testing, on students at risk for academic failure because of poverty, lack of proficiency in English, disability, or membership in population subgroups that have been educationally disadvantaged. The committee recognizes the important potential benefits of standards-based reforms and of test results in revealing the impact of reform efforts on these students. The committee also recognizes the valuable role graduation tests can potentially play in making requirements concrete, in increasing the value of a diploma, and in motivating students and educators alike to work to higher standards. At the same time, educational testing is a complicated endeavor, that reality can fall far short of the model, and that testing cannot by itself provide the desired benefits. If testing is improperly used, it can have negative effects, such as encouraging school leaving, that can hit disadvantaged students hardest. The committee was concerned that the recent proliferation of high school exit examinations could have the unintended effect of increasing dropout rates among students whose rates are already far higher than the average, and has taken a close look at what is known about influences on dropout behavior and at the available data on dropouts and school completion.

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Handbook of Research on Student Engagement pp 491–513 Cite as

The Relationship Between Engagement and High School Dropout

• Russell W. Rumberger 4 &
• Susan Rotermund 5  
• First Online: 01 January 2012

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This chapter first reviews some prominent models of dropping out and the role that individual factors, including engagement, and contextual factors play in the process. It then reviews empirical research related to those factors, with a focus on engagement-related factors. Scholars have proposed a number of models to explain the process of dropping out of school. While there is a fair amount of overlap in the models, they differ with respect to the specific factors that are thought to exert the most influence on dropping out and the specific process that leads to that outcome. The review of conceptual models of the empirical research literature leads to several conclusions about why students drop out. First, no single factor can completely account for a student’s decision to continue in school until graduation. Just as students themselves report a variety of reasons for quitting school, the research literature also identifies a number of salient factors that appear to influence the decision. Second, the decision to drop out is not simply a result of what happens in school. Clearly, students’ behavior and performance in school influence their decision to stay or leave. But students’ activities and behaviors outside of school—particularly engaging in deviant and criminal behavior—also influence their likelihood of remaining in school. Third, dropping out is more of a process than an event.

• Student Engagement
• Extracurricular Activity
• School Dropout
• Graduation Rate
• Educational Expectation

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Much of the material for this chapter comes from a book by the first author, Dropping Out: Why Students Quit School and What Can Be Done About It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). We would like to thank the editors, Sandra Christenson and Cathy Wylie, for their helpful feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

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13.7C: High School Dropouts

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While education can improve life chances, not everyone has equal access to education.

Learning Objectives

• Recall some of the reasons why students in the U.S. may drop out of high school and the potential consequences of dropping out
• The more education people have, the higher their income, the better their life chances, and the higher their standard of living.
• Dropout rates also vary geographically, with the lowest rates in northern states.
• The relationships students have with their peers also influence a student’s likelihood of dropping out.
• Academic Risk Factors : Academic risk factors refer to the performance of students in school and are highly related to school-level problems. These factors include absenteeism, grade retention, special education placement, low performance and grades, and low educational expectations.
• life chances : Life chances (Lebenschancen in German) is a political theory of the opportunities each individual has to improve his or her quality of life. The concept was introduced by German sociologist Max Weber. It is a probabilistic concept, describing how likely it is, given certain factors, that an individual’s life will turn out a certain way.

Life Chances

The more education people have, the higher their income, the better their life chances, and the higher their standard of living. In general, people with more education tend to earn higher incomes and enjoy a higher standard of living. High school dropouts are much less likely to be employed than those with high school and college degrees. Even earning a four-year degree can raise average weekly income by nearly $400.

Max Weber used the concept of “life chances” to express an individual’s access to employment opportunities and other resources. In part, life chances are determined by birth. An individual born into a wealthy family will have higher life chances than average because they will have access to greater opportunities from the moment they are born.

Education also offers a means to improve one’s life chances by improving employment opportunities and making social connections. Thus, the consequences to dropping out can be high, as they significantly decrease the opportunity to improve one’s life chances. In addition to personal costs, dropping out has social costs. Dropouts have a greater likelihood of being arrested. Ultimately, this can lower the average standard of living for society as a whole. According to estimates, the average high school dropout will cost the government over $292,000.

Academic Risk Factors

Not all students have an equal risk of dropping out. Students at risk for dropout based on academic risk factors are those who often have a history of absenteeism and grade retention, academic trouble, and more general disengagement from school life. Students may also be at risk for dropout based on social risk factors. Members of racial and ethnic minority groups drop out at higher rates than white students, as do those from low-income families, from single-parent households, and from families in which one or both parents also did not complete high school. Dropout rates also vary geographically, with the lowest rates in northern states. The highest dropout rates occur in the south and southwestern United States.

Why else might students drop out? Sociologists tend to group dropout risk factors into different categories, including academic risk factors and school-level risk factors. Academic risk factors relate to the performance of students in school. School structure, curriculum, and size may increase the exposure of students to academic risk factors. For example, students are more likely to drop out when they attend schools with less rigorous curriculum, when they attend large schools, or when they attend schools with poor student-teacher interactions.

The relationships students have with their peers also influence a student’s likelihood of dropping out. Students who build relationships with anti-social peers or who have deviant friends were more likely to drop out of school early regardless of their achievement in school. Relationships with parents can also influence a student’s decision to stay in school. The better the relationship, as demonstrated through positive interaction and parental involvement, the more likely the student will stay in school. If a student does not have a good relationship with her parents, the student is more likely to drop out even if she has good grades and good behavior.

Students who drop out of school may identify different motivations, including uninteresting classes (a lack of engagement with school life and classes), feeling unmotivated (especially by teachers who did not demand enough or were not inspirational), personal reasons (had to get a job, became a parent, had to support or care for a family member), and academic challenges (felt like they could not keep up, felt unprepared for high school, had to repeat a grade, or graduation requirements seemed out of reach).

Finally, some education researchers have noted that dropout rates may have been exacerbated by policies such as the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act that required schools to use high-stakes standardized testing as an accountability measure. These policies may have inadvertently encouraged students to drop out of high school, since teachers and administrators utilize grade retention as a strategy to improve test scores and ensure positive ratings for the school. As mentioned above, grade retention increases the likelihood that a student will drop out of school.

• Public Service That Makes a Difference ®

2017 Series • Winter 2017

Communities & banking, income inequality and the decision to drop out of high school.

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When inequality is high, does being at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder push students to work harder to climb the rungs, or do some just give up hope?

Standard economics models of human capital investment hold that income inequality gives people incentive to invest in their own education and to work harder than they otherwise might, in an attempt to climb to the upper rungs of the income distribution. [5] If this standard view is correct, we would expect to see greater rates of high school completion in more unequal places, all else equal. But, simple cross-sectional comparisons reveal the reverse correlation: states with higher levels of income inequality have higher rates of high school noncompletion. The graph "Relationship Between Inequality and High School Noncompletion in the United States" uses a measure of income inequality (the gap between the 50th percentile and the 10th percentile of household income distribution) to reflect the gap between the bottom and the middle. This cross-sectional relationship is consistent with our hypothesis regarding economic despair. Of course, this graph does not hold all else equal, so we conducted rigorous econometric analyses to explore this relationship further.

We used nationally representative survey data collected on nearly 50,000 individuals to investigate whether children from low-socioeconomic-status (SES) homes—as captured by the educational attainment of the mother in the household [6] —are more likely to drop out of high school if they live in a more unequal state or metropolitan area, accounting for individual-level characteristics (including race and whether there are two parents in the home) and state- or metro-area-level characteristics (including controls for the policy environment and economic conditions).

Our measure of income inequality is the 50/10 income ratio mentioned earlier, calculated using U.S. census data on household income. We focused on this measure because the distance between the low end and the middle of the income distribution seems more relevant to disadvantaged youth than the distance to the top of the distribution. Our analyses focused on (relatively) fixed differences across states, not variation over time, because the neighborhoods people live in, the institutions they interact with, and the perceptions children develop about their world and their opportunities are likely formed by the semipermanent conditions of the state, not transitory fluctuations in inequality.

Gender Differences

The data are consistent with the hypothesis that greater income gaps lead children from low-SES homes to drop out of school more often. The unadjusted data for boys show that low-SES boys in high-inequality states are almost six percentage points more likely to drop out of high school than are low-SES boys in low-inequality states—25 percent versus 19 percent. (See "High School Dropout Rate for Boys by Mother's Level of Education and State Level of Income Inequality.") Importantly, boys from high-SES families are no more likely to drop out of school if they live in a more unequal state; their dropout rate is consistently around 5 percent. This helps establish a negative causal effect of income inequality—at least on low-SES boys.

There is no corresponding difference observed among girls. Assuming our hypothesis is correct, this gender difference raises questions about how and why boys appear to be particularly sensitive to the economic environment around them.

We built on this analysis by estimating a series of regression models that also control for other features of the state environment's interaction with low-SES status, along with lower-tail income inequality, to see whether they are really responsible for the relationship between inequality and high school noncompletion among low-SES boys. These other features included the absolute level of income at the bottom of the income distribution, the industrial composition of the labor market, and the demographic characteristics of the state. In every specification, the data clearly showed that the gap between the bottom and the middle of the income distribution is associated with lower rates of high school completion among low-SES boys, and the magnitude of that estimated effect is remarkably consistent across specifications.

For Comparison: A Look at Prospective Wages

High school graduates earn more than high school dropouts: this knowledge may spur young people to stay in school. To test for this, we also estimated an additional model that includes a measure of the wage differential between high school graduates and dropouts. When we controlled for this factor, we still found a positive association between the 50/10 ratio and high school dropout rates. The data do show, however, that inequality in the form of wage returns corresponds with lower rates of high school dropout. [7] It is striking that the data clearly indicate offsetting effects: wage inequality is associated with greater educational completion, but overall household-level income inequality is associated with a negative effect on educational attainment—for low-income boys.

Possible Mechanisms for Income Inequality's Effect

If income inequality affects school completion rates, how does it do so? One possibility is that income inequality exercises its effect through higher rates of residential segregation (by either race or income). It could also be influencing dropout rates through its effect on public-school financing—if taxpayers in more unequal locations provide less funding to schools populated by low-income families, for instance. But the data do not offer support for these proposed mechanisms. [8] It is also possible that low-SES youth in more unequal places are simply of lower ability, for whatever reason. To investigate this possibility, we incorporated the scores of low-SES students on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, as a proxy for ability. Doing so reduced the estimate of the impact of inequality on high school dropout rates by one-third, but nevertheless, the estimated impact remained substantial. Overall, all these approaches support the notion that higher rates of income inequality lead low-SES boys to drop out of school at higher rates.

Avenues of Future Research

Our paper provides robust evidence of a link between higher levels of aggregate lower-tail income inequality and lower rates of high school completion among boys from low-SES homes. Future research should investigate more deeply why this relationship holds. We speculate that the reasons may have to do with individual perceptions, consistent with our model of economic despair, [9] but we cannot directly test this model with the data available to us. Because the data do not offer support for any of the direct mechanisms we described earlier, our "residual" explanation about the role of perceptions takes on greater credibility. We call on researchers across social-science disciplines to conduct additional investigations of this hypothesis. Meanwhile, our findings highlight the importance of policies that give low-SES youth reasons to believe they have opportunities to climb the economic ladder, along with policies that make those opportunities real.

Articles may be reprinted if Communities & Banking and the author are credited and the following disclaimer is used: "The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston or the Federal Reserve System. Information about organizations and upcoming events is strictly informational and not an endorsement."

About the Authors

Melissa S. Kearney Melissa S. Kearney is a professor of economics at the University of Maryland Email: [email protected]

Phillip P. Levine , Wellesley College Phillip B. Levine is the Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College Email: [email protected]

• Of nations in the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), only Chile, Mexico, and Turkey have greater income inequality, as measured by the Gini Coefficient (a standard measure of national income inequality). See the OECD Income Distribution Database, http://www.oecd.org/social/income-distribution-database.htm .
• See, for example, Miles Corak, "Income Inequality, Equality of Opportunity, and Intergenerational Mobility," Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 3 (Summer 2013):79–102.
• Miles Corak, "Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults? Lessons from a Cross-Country Comparison of Generational Earnings Mobility," Research on Economic Inequality 13 no. 1 (March 2006): 143–88.
• Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine, "Income Inequality, Social Mobility, and the Decision to Drop Out of High School" (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 2016), http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Projects/BPEA/Spring-2016/KearneyLevine_IncomeInequalityUpwardMobility_ConferenceDraft.pdf?la=en .
• Gary Solon formalizes this concept in a model in which parents make human capital investments in their children. Building on the theoretical foundation of Gary Becker and Nigel Tomes's 1979 "An Equilibrium Theory of the Distribution of Income and Intergenerational Mobility," ( Journal of Political Economy 87 no. 6: 1153–89), he shows that parental investment in a child's human capital increases when the payoff from that return is higher—that is, when there is more wage inequality. Gary Solon, "A Model of Intergenerational Mobility Variation over Time and Place," in Generational Income Mobility in North America and Europe , ed. Miles Corak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• The best measure of family resources would be expected lifetime income, but that is not available. Maternal education is a good proxy for that measure because it reflects the strong relationship between education and income and overlooks year-to-year random fluctuations.
• In a technical sense, we obtained a positive and significant coefficient on the interaction between bottom-tail inequality and low SES on the dropout rate for boys, but a negative coefficient on the interaction between educational wage differentials and low SES in the same model.
• As in past analyses, we draw this conclusion by estimating regression models that also include these other factors interacting with low-SES status. We find that doing so has no substantive impact on our main finding.
• Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip B. Levine, "Income Inequality and Early Nonmarital Childbearing," Journal of Human Resources 49, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 1–31.
• PDF of this article (pdf)

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School's Out: America's Dropout Crisis

A high school dropout's midlife hardships.

Claudio Sanchez

Kenny Buchanan, 44, dropped out of school as a teenager. He lost his job when the economy collapsed. Claudio Sanchez/NPR hide caption

Kenny Buchanan, 44, dropped out of school as a teenager. He lost his job when the economy collapsed.

Fifth in a five-part series

Today, the people who seem to be hurting the most in our sputtering economy are dropouts in their 30s, 40s and 50s.

Despite their work experience, some can't even apply for a new job without proof that they completed high school. One man has thought a lot about his education and the decisions he made as a teenager.

Kenny Buchanan, 44, has lived in the coal-rich mountains of Schuylkill County, Pa., all his life. He's happy to have work after being jobless for more than a year.

Buchanan recently found work at an aluminum manufacturing plant.

"I'm a processor," he says. "We make aluminum for propane tanks, runways — aluminum runways for the U.S. Air Force."

It's not a permanent job yet. Buchanan is still on probation. It's the eighth job he's had in the last five years.

"With a wife and two kids, it's been rough," he says, all because of a decision he made 26 years ago.

"[In] ninth grade, I dropped out of school. I was 18. I flunked twice, I had no interest, and I told my mom 'cause I was living at home at the time, I said, 'I'm done, I'm not going back to school,'" he says.

Buchanan says he didn't consider how this would limit his job prospects down the road. Right after he dropped out, he got a full-time job at Burger King.

"Back then, I could get a job anywhere," he says. "I could work at Burger King, quit that job and have a job the next day without an education."

Why Dropout Data Can Be So Unreliable

Accurate dropout figures are very hard to find because most states don't adequately collect or analyze the data. Part of the problem is that every state has had a different definition for dropout. Read more about the trouble with dropout stats .

Buchanan says he's always been a hard worker, with good references, but he's never had a steady job.

"I worked in foundries, I drove forklifts, operated overhead cranes," he says.

And in the last few years, finding work that can support a family has gotten even harder. Employers in Schuylkill County have started asking job applicants to have a high school diploma.

"[Those] good paying jobs, I could've had but because I didn't have a high school diploma, they wouldn't even consider me," he says.

Buchanan is one of 40 million Americans who never graduated from high school. Most of these people, about 60 percent, are between 40 and 70 years old, according to the American Council on Education. About 9 in 10 have never earned more than $40,000. Buchanan falls into that majority.

It's depressing, he says, to run into old high school buddies — the guys he could have graduated with — and someone would ask him about his salary.

"Seven dollars an hour," he says. "It hurts. It's embarrassing."

Two years ago, Buchanan did something about it. He sought help at Career Link, a state-run job training and education center for unemployed adults.

After an orientation class, Buchanan realized he needed to earn the closest thing to a high school diploma: a GED. But, like most adults who never finished high school, Buchanan realized his math and reading skills weren't up to par.

"When you get that GED book and you see the math that's required — algebra, trig — I think that scares a lot of people. Especially if they haven't been in school for 30 years," Career Link Director Sharon Angle says.

She says a lot of the older dropouts just give up.

"They'll say, 'I'm just going to get a job here and there, pick up what I can and just hope that I make it to 62, until I can get on Social Security,'" she says.

Employers who come to the center looking for workers get frustrated too, she says.

"To be honest, [employers] want someone they can depend on. Someone who'll show up and give them a good day's work," she says.

But, if they don't have a high school diploma or GED, they don't get an interview or a job. Angle says most of the businesses she deals with have adopted that new corporate policy.

On the other hand, businesses are sending an important message to kids: stay in school, get your diploma, and then get a job.

It's a good message, Buchanan says, but it couldn't have come at a worse time.

"Around here, there ain't a lot of jobs," he says. "Everything that gets built around here is strip malls ... $7 an hour jobs. How can you live on $7 an hour?"

Buchanan says that's why Schuylkill County's recent high school graduates are leaving the area, including his oldest son. He's thinking about college. Buchanan's wife wants to move — to Florida, if possible — but Buchanan says he's staying put.

If he's hired permanently at the aluminum plant next month, his family will finally have health insurance and enough to live on. Buchanan says he's praying the job lasts.

"I'm a religious man, and when all else fails, God is always there for you. I mean, he's been good to me," he says.

If he didn't have his faith to support him, Buchanan says, it would have been a lot easier to give in and stay poor and miserable.

"Dropping out of school [was] one of the biggest mistakes I ever done," Buchanan says. "What I did, I did, but I can make things better."

He believes he has made things better. He got his GED, and he says his friends and family respect him for doing that. Buchanan says he knows he might be laid off, but the stigma of being a high school dropout has faded forever.

Related NPR Stories

Special series: america's dropout crisis, school dropout rates add to fiscal burden.

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Attachment and School Completion: Understanding Young People Who Have Dropped Out of High School and Important Factors in Their Re-Enrollment

Gro hilde ramsdal.

1 Department of Social Education, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 9404 Harstad, Norway; [email protected]

2 Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, 9038 Tromsø, Norway

Associated Data

Not applicable.

When students drop out of high school, this is often negative for their development as well as for society, as those who drop out have an increased risk of unemployment, health problems, and social problems. The aim of the present study was to synthesize knowledge regarding processes related to school dropout in general and school re-enrollment in particular. We performed a narrative review of the literature, focusing on Norwegian and Nordic studies, but we also included studies from other countries when relevant. We discussed the findings in relation to attachment theory and our own research on the topic. As a result, we identified five main challenges to upholding education-related goals in long-term dropout processes: lack of relatedness, overchallenged self-regulation capacity, compensating for a history of failure, wounded learner identities, and coping with prolonged stress. In conclusion, the identified challenges converged on the importance of belonging and social support. The prerequisite for addressing the challenges seemed to be the establishment of a trustful relationship between the students who have dropped out and at least one teacher, and preferably also with other supportive adults. These relationships may provide sufficient social support and aid the students’ motivation to complete school.

1. Introduction

Formal qualifications have become a necessity for permanent employment and participation in present-day society [ 1 ]. Thus, much effort has gone into easing adolescents’ transition from secondary education into employment or higher education [ 2 ]. Most adolescents in industrialized countries complete their secondary education. In Norway, 79.6% of high school students complete high school within a 5/6 year period [ 3 ]; however, if the remaining students do not re-enroll and complete high school, this represents a huge loss for those not completing as well as for society. In Norway, the newest calculations show a financial cost of USD 1.7 million for each dropout student [ 4 ]. The students that leave school early must endure an increased risk of unemployment, incarceration, drug addiction, and becoming social security recipients [ 4 , 5 , 6 ].

The rather stable dropout rates during the last 30 years seem to challenge a basic idea of the Norwegian welfare state, namely the belief in equalizing social inequalities through education [ 7 ]. The situation in Norway reflects that of other comparable OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, where a significant minority of secondary school students are left behind [ 8 ]. The report clearly shows that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are overrepresented in the dropout rates [ 8 ]. A systematic review could not determine which interventions were the most effective in decreasing dropout rates [ 9 ]. Interestingly, one pervasive characteristic of effective measures did stand out; at a minimum, effective interventions must establish trust and build caring relationships with the students, regardless of the context [ 9 ].

This unsuccessful search for a single effective intervention to increase school completion is most likely explained by the many factors found to influence graduation and dropout rates, including individual characteristics of students and factors associated with their families, schools, and communities [ 5 ]. Reviewing 203 studies, Lim and Rumberger [ 5 ] conclude that no single factor can explain the decision to stay in or leave school. Several salient factors within the various domains were associated with the risk of dropping out of school. Most studies were unable to establish a strong causal connection, but they did suggest a connection. The review concludes that academic achievement is one of the most widely studied predictors of school dropout, based on the indicators of test scores and grades. Grades turn out to be the most robust and consistent of the two indicators, as they subsume both ability and effort [ 5 ].

A meta-analytic review including 75 studies and 635 risk factors for school dropout found that grade retention, low IQ, learning difficulties, and low academic achievement have large effects [ 10 ]; however, the risk domains with the largest effects for school absenteeism included negative attitudes towards school, substance abuse, internalizing and externalizing problems, and low parent involvement, thus confirming that many factors are involved in school dropout processes. Moreover, various symptom profiles of psychological ill-being are also found to be associated with school dropout intentions [ 11 ].

Nevertheless, most dropout students tend to score within the normal range on IQ, despite their lower levels of academic achievement [ 12 , 13 ], indicating that high school graduation may not exclusively depend on inherent cognitive ability. Staying in school may also depend on how children become motivated to appreciate and master educational challenges through experiences in the parent–child relationship. In a remarkably thorough follow-up study of risk and adaption from birth to adulthood, Sroufe and colleagues [ 14 ] found that at the age of three and a half years, school dropout could be predicted with 77% accuracy from the early “quality-of-care variable”. This variable included parental responsivity to the child, parent–child attachment quality, and quality of the early home environment. In their largely lower socioeconomic status (SES) sample, neither IQ nor achievement data improved on this prediction. Sroufe and colleagues [ 14 ] conclude that it is not primarily their inherent lack of ability that is causing dropouts to leave school early. Dropouts gradually become unable to master the educational demands of school, much due to the influence of psychosocial factors, or as Finn expressed it, some children may “arrive at school predisposed to nonparticipation and non-identification” [ 15 ] (p. 130).

The importance of relationships also emerges in interview studies on school dropout processes [ 16 , 17 ]. When young people who had dropped out of school and stayed out of education and employment and training for 2–5 years were asked about their experiences with leaving school early, they described lives characterized by abandonment and lack of social support. They had been separated from one or both parents over longer periods of time, many had struggled to find friends in school, they could not remember one single teacher who had been supportive or helped them in mastering school tasks, and several had struggled with mental health issues after being bullied. Other dropouts described themselves as invisible at home and at school [ 18 ]. Furthermore, parenting practices are found to be related to the risk of school dropout, and even after controlling for previous academic achievement, adolescents from authoritative families were less likely to drop out than adolescents from authoritarian and neglectful families [ 19 ]. Moreover, many dropouts have been found to live in families where communication and supervision were minimal [ 20 ].

In addition, other types of relationships also seem to matter in school dropout processes. For example, an important factor in helping adolescents with mental health problems graduate from high school seems to be the teacher–child relationship. Positive teacher–child relationships were found to have the potential to reduce the association between early mental health problems and school dropout [ 21 ]. Although teacher support seems to have a particularly positive effect on school engagement and completion, relationships in general seem to play an important role in the motivational processes leading to school dropout. Both teacher support and loneliness in the school context were found to be strong predictors of students’ intention to leave school early [ 22 ].

That said, school dropout may be only a postponement of high school completion. Barrat and Berliner [ 23 ] found that about 19% of the 2011 graduating cohort had dropped out, and of these students, 22% had re-enrolled within a year; however, only 30% of the re-enrollees had graduated six years later. Other studies also indicate that early school leavers are less likely to re-enroll and complete formal learning [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. Thus, many of the results described above indicate the relevance of early intervention in school dropout processes; however, early interventions do not always solve the problem, and some children develop problems later in their development, or their problems are discovered much later in their developmental process. These young people are also in need of some kind of intervention, some as late as after dropping out of high school. Consequently, to understand the core characteristics of a successful dropout prevention strategy, it seems essential to focus more on understanding the re-enrollment process [ 16 , 27 , 28 ].

In a prior study, we interviewed young people who had dropped out of school and work and had joined an intervention program aimed at re-enrolling them in school [ 29 ]. The participants were interviewed at the beginning of the program and again when they were about to complete it. The program offered assistance to school dropouts aged 18 to 25 in their struggle to re-enroll in and eventually graduate from high school. This was a training and support program providing long-term (more than one year) dropout students with structure and support. The participants met experienced social workers every weekday at nine for breakfast and then participated in group activities such as basketball, courses in personal economy, CV writing, and they visited potential employers, thus getting to know the local job market. The participants were provided with daily support from personnel experienced in working with young people and whose focus was on helping the participants discover their skills and find their motivation and thus gradually help them re-enroll in work or education [ 29 ].

We found that the participants who had dropped out of school and stayed out of education and regular work for long periods reported three main challenges at the beginning of their re-enrollment processes: confusion about what to do with their lives, lack of any kind of inner motivation, and lack of endurance when facing adversity. After nine months, the participants described how the intervention had strongly stimulated their inner motivation and substantially reduced their confusion about what to do with their lives. Several pointed to a re-socialization process that drew them away from watching TV and playing video games all day. The one thing they were still struggling with was resilience in the face of adversity. When problems occurred or they struggled to learn something, their first response was to withdraw into absenteeism [ 29 ]. In the aftermath of our study, we were inspired to search for relevant literature that could help us to understand these and other results on re-enrollment more thoroughly and thus contribute to the discussion on important issues in school re-enrollment processes.

2. Materials and Methods

There is a need for more synthesized knowledge regarding processes related to school completion. In the present study, we perform a narrative review of literature pertaining to high school dropout and re-enrollment. The purpose of a narrative review is to synthesize the literature in a particular field of study [ 30 , 31 ]. This is achieved by interpreting prior results narratively, pinpointing current topics and recent developments [ 32 ]. A narrative review approach is especially useful when attempting to gain an overview of a research field characterized by a high number of studies with different approaches and topics, as is the case of the dropout/re-enrollment literature. We are particularly interested in literature that sheds light on how the theory of attachment relates to high school dropout and re-enrollment.

We searched databases, including Google Scholar and PsycInfo, for literature related to our field of interest. We used different search terms, including various combinations of ‘reenrolment’, ‘reengagement’, ‘re-entry’, ‘school’, ‘youth’, ‘adolescent’, ‘child’, etc. Initial searches gave a high number of publications, and we gradually narrowed and refined our search to studies focusing on factors relating to the re-enrollment process and particularly to studies inspired by attachment theory. While we considered relevant studies from all countries, we strived especially to include relevant literature from Norway and the other Nordic countries.

The purpose of the present review is to identify and sum up central findings in the literature and to discuss these findings considering our own research relating to school dropout and school completion.

3.1. Attachment Theory and School Completion

We have been interviewing long-term high school dropouts for the last ten years and all participants in these studies had one thing in common, namely some kind of abandonment experiences in the form of being separated from one or both parents during childhood thus lacking stable adults and social support in their lives [ 16 , 17 , 29 ]. Dropout research in general indicates that various predictors of school dropout may combine into individual disengagement processes [ 27 ]. Nevertheless, some children face different kinds of adversity and still manage to adapt and complete school [ 33 ]. The most robust predictor of such resilient adaption is supportive and responsive parenting [ 34 ]. Thus, Masten and Coatsworth [ 33 ] concluded their review of resilience research by commenting that the development of competence is protected by powerful systems, and that the quality of parent–child relationships is among the most prominent of these.

The influence of parent–child relationships on school disengagement processes has been studied from various angles: parenting practices, parenting styles, or parent–child attachment quality [ 35 ]. The most robust predictor of long-term resilience, however, is early family relationships [ 34 ]. Bowlby’s attachment theory is the most dominant approach to understanding such early family relations. Bowlby assumes that the child’s early experience of security constitutes a causal mechanism in development [ 36 , 37 ]. Only by increasing and upholding the proximity to the attachment figure, can the child keep safe and thereby facilitate the acquisition of skills necessary to survive [ 36 , 37 ]. Caretakers can either permit, ignore, or reject the child’s attachment behaviors. Based on these early interactive experiences, children develop different kinds of trust in their attachment figure. The various kinds of trust involve different expectations of support and comfort depending on the availability of the caretaker. These experiences constitute the basis for attachment quality.

Ainsworth and her colleagues explored these individual differences in attachment quality, categorizing them into secure, insecure ambivalent, or insecure-avoidant attachment [ 38 , 39 ]. These three different attachment qualities also define differences in children’s strategies for solving adaptational problems. Insecure avoidant children will not use the attachment figure as a safe haven, or a base for exploration, and do not seek to be comforted by the caregiver. Insecure ambivalent children will try to use the attachment figure as a safe haven by clinging to him or her, but without succeeding in establishing trust and security. Nevertheless, they all have a strategy for dealing with separation and insecurity. Some children demonstrated a lack of such a strategy through disorganized behaviors in the face of separation and were classified as disorganized or disoriented attachment [ 40 ]. Disorganized attachment was associated with high-risk environments and behavioral problems [ 41 , 42 ]. While Bowlby focused on the socio-emotional outcomes of variations in attachment quality, it is possible that developing insecure attachment strategies could involve a potential for disturbing the child’s basic learning processes [ 43 ].

Having no strategy or an insecure strategy for dealing with separation and insecurity, will expose these children to additional challenges in solving adaptational problems. Being less able to use their attachment figures as a safe haven, these children have less access to support in regulating their emotions. Furthermore, when children focus their attention on emotion regulation activities, they will be distracted from their exploration of the environment [ 44 ]. In the long run, such patterns may negatively influence school learning processes and academic performance, setting the children up for school disengagement and school dropout. As an example of this kind of potential mediation, Mancinelli and colleagues [ 45 ] found that maternal attachment directly and indirectly through self-control influenced adjustment difficulties. Moreover, individual differences in self-control reliably predict academic attainment and course grades [ 46 ].

Looking at parent–child attachment patterns as a causal factor in development, calls for potentially mediating mechanisms explaining the association between attachment on one side with school achievement and dropout on the other. Ijzendoorn and colleagues [ 43 ] introduced a framework of four main hypotheses for such mediating mechanisms. The attachment explorations hypothesis argues that being able to effectively reduce emotional stress, as in a secure attachment, increases the time and motivation available to explore the environment, learn to solve new tasks, and overcome problems. The attachment-teaching hypothesis states that mothers of securely attached children provide more supportive frames for child exploration and give better assistance in problem-solving situations. The social network hypothesis asserts that as early relational experiences are organized into mental representations that serve as a guide for understanding and coping with new relationships, these secure inner working models may help the child develop positive new relationships. The attachment-cooperation hypothesis declares that because secure children develop positive working models of the self and the self with others, they are consequently less anxious when away from their parents and comply better with the demands of the situation, for example, at school and in test situations. Reviewing the research related to these hypotheses, we constructed a model illustrating how many mediating influences seem to form a dynamic system of interaction [ 28 ]. The model suggests a possible mediation through all four mechanisms described by IJzendoorn and colleagues [ 43 ]. The research suggested that school dropout is a long-term developmental process influenced by early psychosocial factors that set the stage for disengagement processes.

3.2. Developing Education-Related Goals

One of the first things we noticed about the participants’ description of their dropout and re-enrollment processes, was their problems with developing appropriate personal goals in general and education-related goals specifically [ 29 ]; however, almost no studies have attempted to examine individuals’ personal goals over a longer period [ 47 ]. According to Salmela-Aro [ 47 ], future research should aim to create an intervention program helping in the construction of functional personal goals and building strategies for goal attainment during critical life transitions. Such construction of education-related goals was the main objective of the re-enrollment intervention program described above [ 29 ]. Although this study only followed dropout students during the nine months that the intervention lasted, the participants reported spontaneously on goal development during critical life transitions.

The participants reported a long-lasting experience of confusion about their education-related preferences [ 29 ]. They had negative experiences with school, including several unfulfilled education-related goals. Gradually, they had become ambivalent about formulating any kind of education-related goals, not wanting to disappoint themselves or others, again. Little, Salmela-Aro, and Phillips [ 48 ] declare that it is the demands, challenges, and opportunities that people encounter at a particular period in their life span that influence the kind of personal goals they construct. People seem to make choices based on these personal goals, and these goals come to influence how people manage their development. Thus, when young people become confused about their education-related goals, this might influence their ability to make choices and manage their developmental transition into young adulthood, according to a life-span model of motivation [ 49 , 50 ]. It is this construction of goals that will optimize or reduce a person’s potential to deal successfully with developmental transitions such as completing education and entering employment [ 47 ].

The confusion caused by faltering educational goals may also negatively influence their endurance when facing educational challenges or failures [ 29 ]. Subsequently, low academic expectations, confusion about education-related goals, and problems with endurance and adjustment of these goals in the face of adversity, as described by dropout students [ 16 , 17 , 29 ] seemed to result in what Salmela-Aro [ 47 ] (p. 66) calls a lack of “predictable, socially recognized roadmaps for human lives”. In line with this kind of thinking, intervention programs aiming at re-enrollment in high school must focus on the re-construction of these road maps.

According to the life-span model of motivation, people’s socialization can be described by the four Cs: Channeling, Choice, Co-agency, and Compensation [ 51 , 52 ]. When young people grow up in different environments, these various experiences will channel their developmental trajectories. Salmela-Aro [ 47 ] describes these environments as “opportunity spaces”, influencing people’s motivation, thinking, and behavior. Moreover, people are also active in their own development by making choices that influence the development of these opportunity spaces [ 53 ]. Personal goals are one factor involved in this mechanism [ 47 ]. Although young people make their own choices based on their own goals, other people are present in their opportunity space, giving them feedback and voicing role expectations and herby influencing goal construction.

The construction of personal goals is thus part of co-agency processes requiring compensations for failures and adjusting goals according to feedback. Eccles [ 54 ] suggested that these co-agency processes play a particularly important role in the construction of education-related goals and trajectories. For example, choosing to bond with friends characterized by antisocial behavior, may limit their opportunity spaces and eventually have a negative effect on academic attitudes, motivation, and school completion [ 55 , 56 , 57 ]. Accordingly, students with externalizing problems who are rejected by their teachers and their prosocial peers, seem particularly at risk of school dropout [ 55 , 58 , 59 ]. Parent–child attachment is a vital factor in the development of these co-agency processes and secure attachment has been found to promote active involvement in building effective relationships with peers and friends [ 60 ].

The young people in our studies of high school dropouts described opportunity spaces characterized by a lack of personal, parental, and teacher expectations, an excessive number of potential educational choices combined with a lack of social support [ 16 , 17 ]. These co-agency experiences evidently channeled their confusion about education-related goals and problems with goal adjustment, thus reducing their opportunity spaces and their choices until finally, they experienced no other option than dropping out of school. According to Wrosch and Freund [ 61 ], managing non-normative developmental demands such as school dropout requires more self-regulatory skills than managing normative events. Accordingly, Salmela-Aro [ 47 ] suggests that a lack of success with educational-related goals may act as a signal for activating goal disengagement and self-protection. Such increased demands on self-regulation followed by goal-disengagement and self-protection constitute relevant explanations to the confusion described by the participants in an intervention program aimed at high school re-enrollment [ 29 ].

The participants reported that upholding education-related goals became impossible in the face of high absenteeism and school dropout and that at the same time parents, peers, and society in general communicated that fulfilling these goals was essential. The participants described their self-regulatory skills as overchallenged by having to cope with repeated failures resulting in confusion about preferences and realistic opportunities. In addition, their self-regulation capacity was overchallenged due to their lack of experience with dividing long-term goals such as school completion into short-term goals such as completing a semester, reducing absenteeism to a minimum next month, and so on. Setting up their goal two or three years ahead meant this goal did not produce any immediate rewards. They experienced that it was impossible to activate their inner motivation over such long periods of time, without any kind of milestones to look forward to and no strategy for self-rewards; therefore, future intervention programs aimed at re-enrollment in high school should focus more on addressing the re-establishment and upholding of the participants’ trust in and strategies for realizing relevant, realistic education-related goals.

3.3. Intrinsic Motivation and Flow

The life-span model of motivation suggests that being unable to compensate for failures and adjust your goals, is likely to lead to depression [ 47 ]. Such compensation failures might help to explain the absence of intrinsic motivation found in our study [ 29 ]. Intrinsic motivation is supposed to bring a state of consciousness that is so enjoyable as to be autotelic (i.e., having its goal within itself) [ 62 ]. According to self-determination theory, intrinsic motivation leads to engagement [ 63 ], and the self-system model suggests that engagement is the main mediator between intrinsic motivation and academic performance [ 64 ]. A particular kind of intrinsic motivation is called ‘flow’ and is characterized by an intense and focused concentration on the present moment, merging of action and awareness, loss of reflective self-consciousness, a sense of control of one’s actions, and distortion of temporal experience [ 65 ]. The concept of flow has caught the interest of practitioners focused on the fostering of positive experiences, such as teachers in formal schooling, according to Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi [ 65 ].

Fostering intense positive experiences is also imperative when trying to re-enroll disillusioned young people in high school and make them endure educational and social challenges. Strong positive experiences are essential to compensate for their history of failure and low self-esteem [ 66 , 67 ]. However, keeping up a feeling of flow is demanding due to the fragile balance between keeping the challenge interesting and rewarding without exceeding the person’s skills [ 65 ]. The importance of this fragile balance became evident, in the re-enrollment project, when staff tried to rekindle the inner motivation and education-related goals of the participants. The participants described the importance of the staff monitoring the fluctuations between boredom and anxiety tightly. Keeping participants in touch with their intrinsic motivation was described as essential for making them enroll in, engage in, endure, and complete the intervention program [ 29 ]. The all-time presence of staff and their constant follow up of the fragile balance between anxiety and depression on one side and boredom on the other were imperative to activate and develop enduring inner motivation and engagement.

3.4. Wounded Learners, the Re-Invention of Learning Identities

Hegna [ 68 ] interviewed male Norwegian high school students about their transition processes from being students in school, to becoming apprentices in real working life. The study emphasizes the importance of identity transformations in these processes. Although the young men did describe some positive experiences with specific teachers at school and moments of joy, these narratives were exceptions to the rule. Their experiences with school were characterized by disengagement, failure, dropout, and teachers treating them unfairly, ignoring them, administering undue punishments, or having no expectations whatsoever to their academic achievements and no confidence in them in general; however, none of these young men blamed their teachers, their school, or the system. The adolescents took full responsibility for their failure and explained them as personal failures [ 68 ].

Hegna [ 68 ] characterizes these stories as descriptions of wounded student identities, meaning that the students had stopped thinking about themselves as people who are interested in learning and able to learn. According to Hegna [ 68 ], constant negative feedback and feelings of failure substantially affected the way these young men looked at themselves and how they thought about their future. These observations are in line with the social-cultural perspective of learning, where learning and identity formation develop through a mutual interaction [ 69 , 70 ]. Hegna [ 68 ] suggests that, to accomplish successful apprenticeships for wounded learner identities, the workplace must offer the apprentices a learner identity that enables them to heal their wounded learner identities. More specifically, learner identity is about how students see themselves in general, but more particularly, about “how they interpret their participation and engagement with learning” [ 71 ] (p. 169). Thus, identity comes to be a precondition for learning.

What the students in Hegna’s study have in common with students in our studies are the stories they tell about their wounded student identities, the image of themselves as “not being a school person” as one of them expressed it [ 16 , 29 ]. The participants in the two latter studies and the apprentices from Hegna’s study, have another factor in common, namely their narratives about going through transitions. The apprentices describe transitions from school to working life, while the dropouts describe the transition from school to unemployment or the transition from being a dropout and subsequently becoming recruited into re-enrollment processes aimed at completing high school. Ecclestone [ 72 ] maintains that such transitions can become problematic when the learner identity from one context turns out to be incompatible with the learner identity necessary to succeed with the transition into another context.

Accordingly, transitioning back into school may depend on stressful identity work or becoming re-socialized into the school environment. In this line of thinking, the problem is not that they are lacking the capacity for learning, but that they have a wounded relationship with learning. Lange and colleagues [ 73 ] claim that wounded learners need to discharge and transform their former identities and make room for new and more appropriate identities. Consequently, it is a bit disconcerting that none of the dropouts we have interviewed across three studies ever described this kind of identity work initiated by teachers, counselors, or school leaders in high school [ 16 , 17 , 29 ]. Although several of them had been through two or three re-enrollment processes, there had been no attempts at transforming their wounded learner identities into more viable learner identities. Furthermore, they had received no support in changing their relationship with learning. Trying to learn from dropouts with repeated experiences of unsuccessful re-enrollment seems to indicate that the development of effective strategies to change re-enrollers’ relationships with learning is a topic in need of more systematic exploration.

3.5. The Management of Stress in the Re-Enrollment Process

Wounded learner identities are often explained as resulting from long-term negative stress reactions, although the concept of ‘stress’ is not often used within the field of dropout research [ 27 ]. Stress models have especially been implemented to explain the development of mental illnesses such as depression [ 74 ]. Some researchers indicate that this research underscores the relevance of stress for academic achievement and suggests the stress process as a new angle to look at dropout [ 75 ]. Dupéré and colleagues [ 75 ] specify that while high school dropout is not a mental illness, they see it as a withdrawal from stressful social situations associated with failure and/or humiliation. These kinds of external circumstances and experiences or stressors may challenge the adolescents’ adaptive capabilities and give rise to adjustment problems by restricting the ‘opportunity space’ of adolescents at risk of dropping out and those trying to re-enroll in school.

Some adolescents develop mental health problems due to such stress [ 17 ]. Lazarus and Folkman [ 76 ] state that it is the perception of lacking the necessary resources to cope with the situation that results in stress. This would imply that the experience of lacking the appropriate resources to meet the academic and social demands necessary to complete high school is one stressor in the lives of re-enrollment students; however, stressors can be both discrete disruptive events such as experiencing school dropout, and more long-term adversity such as poverty or parental drug abuse. The stress process model explains how various stressors are associated with the development of adjustment problems [ 75 ]. The model includes the unequal distribution of stressors and resources among high and low socioeconomic status groups, making some individuals more vulnerable to stress than others. Stress proliferation is a concept explaining how stress seems to accumulate. Lucio, Hunt, and Bornovalova [ 77 ] found a cumulative effect showing that the presence of at least two risk factors puts an individual at risk of academic failure. These results are consistent with the developmental model claiming that it is the accumulation of risk more than the nature of factors that are essential in predicting academic underachievement [ 33 ]. Nevertheless, reviewing re-enrollment interventions with NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), Mawn and colleagues [ 78 ] describe them to have a pragmatic approach, combining skills-based classroom training with on-the-job training. The interventions did not primarily target important psychological barriers to work engagement, such as enhancing confidence or reducing stress. Considering the high-stress reactivity during adolescence would nevertheless make the stress model highly relevant to re-enrollment research [ 79 , 80 ].

3.6. Belonging and Social Support

So far, we have suggested that understanding early psychosocial development, developing education-related goals and intrinsic motivation, mending wounded learning identities, and managing stress are central issues when trying to understand high school re-enrollment; however, none of these issues can be solved by these young people on their own. Education-related goals, for example, are developed through a co-agency process dependent on feedback [ 81 ]. This implies that dropouts in school re-enrollment processes are dependent on receiving specific types of feedback to develop education-related goals, thus making them dependent on the right kind of support. Such positive relationships are also essential for young people when they need to reduce stress, experience flow, and mend wounded learning identities. Consequently, participants in the re-enrollment program strongly stressed the importance of spending time with positive, accomplished, and helpful staff members [ 29 ]. They described how the support from these relationships helped them in their goal development, their re-motivation for school or work, in their mending of wounded learner identities through experiences of progress and success, and by assisting them in their stress management.

Hence, relationships emerge as an essential factor in several studies on dropout processes [ 28 , 82 , 83 ]. Young NEETs, who had dropped out of high school, for example, focused in their interviews on abandonment and lack of stable relationships at home and at school, describing how the absence of parents, teachers, and peers characterized their dropout processes [ 16 ]. Accordingly, Frostad, Pijl, and Mjaavatn [ 22 ] found that teacher support and loneliness in the school context were strong predictors of 16-year-olds’ intention to leave school and that loneliness outperformed well-known predictors of school completion, such as gender, parental education level, and academic achievement level.

The “caring teacher” is also reappearing as a core factor in several studies focusing on dropout processes [ 84 , 85 ]. The caring teachers are willing to help, hold on to high standards and high expectations, and refuse to give up on their students; however, students who drop out typically never mention any teacher that was helpful or supportive [ 14 , 17 ], or they describe wounded learning identities resulting from experiences with what they perceive as uncaring teachers who did not like them [ 86 ]. Consequently, dropouts and at-risk dropouts describe failed struggles to develop a positive identity in school, partly due to the absence of important relationships with peers, parents, and teachers or due to negative relationship experiences such as conflict with teachers or being bullied or marginalized.

One of the important aspects of positive relationships is the social support that they provide [ 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 ]. According to Thompson et al. [ 87 ], social support may have various functions. Social support may provide emotional support in the form of affirmation, understanding, and empathy. It may also provide social resources such as advice and guidance. Moreover, it may make information, service resources, and assistance more available. Finally, they point to the function that social support has in monitoring and detecting signs of negative development such as depressive symptoms, stressing that preventing harm is essential to promoting well-being. During stressful periods, social support can have a stress-buffering function. Social support is associated with the reduction in psychological stress, thus contributing to recovery and better coping [ 87 ]; however, only perceived support has these positive effects and, for relationships to be perceived as supportive, they need to be responsive, warm, and accepting and to provide security [ 92 ]. There seems to be a core idea that children’s interaction with parents, teachers, and peers generates generalized expectations about the self in relationships with others. These expectations are also referred to as a sense of belonging [ 93 ] or relatedness [ 94 ]. In our studies of long-term high school dropout and re-enrollment, young people describe experiences with abandonment and lack of relatedness and social support as the one thing they all had in common. They all seem to search for a climate of belongingness, recognition, and coping not sufficiently provided by their schools, their communities, or their families.

4. Discussion

The life span model of motivation implies that the goals individuals set are a function of the opportunities and challenges that are present in their social environment [ 47 ]. We have seen across several studies how young people coping with school dropout processes describe the various challenges present in their social environment as they struggle to construct, uphold, and fulfill their education-related goals [ 16 , 17 , 29 ]. The first challenge they describe is experiences of a lack of relatedness through, for example, abandonment and being separated from one or both parents for longer periods during childhood. In line with attachment theory, such separations and abandonment experiences may have influenced their psychosocial development and attachment quality development in negative ways. This hypothesis is strengthened by the fact that many of them describe a lack of relatedness before and during school years and in late adolescence and early adulthood. Using the perspective of the life span model of motivation, such challenges to their relatedness may have restricted their opportunity spaces from an early age, thus negatively influencing their construction of education-related goals.

According to the model, co-agency processes and feedback are of particular importance to the construction of education-related goals [ 47 ], indicating the importance of stable and competent adults and the presence of social support. The lack of success in constructing and upholding education-related goals, may act as a signal for the goal disengagement and self-protection processes seen in our interviews with long-term dropouts [ 16 , 29 ]. Managing such non-normative developmental demands as those associated with school dropout, seems to require more self-regulatory skills than managing normative school completion processes [ 61 ] and thus defining a second challenge to upholding education-related goals. According to Bowlby [ 37 ], the development of self-regulatory capacity is a consequence of early parent–child interaction and emerging attachment patterns; however, for the young people in our studies describing abandonment, lack of relatedness, and social support as characteristics of their school dropout processes, these excessive demands on their self-regulatory capacity may have overchallenged their ability to self-regulate. This may have reduced their ability to handle academic failures and the succeeding blows to their academic self-concepts and their self-esteem.

In line with this thinking, Salmela-Aro [ 47 ] suggests that such an inability to compensate for failures and thus adjust your goals is likely to lead to depression. According to Baumeister et al. [ 66 ], strong positive experiences are needed to compensate for a history of failure and low self-esteem. Fostering such intense positive experiences emerge as a third challenge when trying to remotivate and re-enroll disillusioned and disengaged young people in school. Keeping participants in touch with their intrinsic motivation was described as essential for long-term dropouts in completing a school re-enrollment program [ 29 , 95 ]. According to these participants, keeping them in touch with their inner motivation depended upon the establishment of trusting relationships to, and close follow-up by, competent adults. The participants also describe how they became re-socialized as they were offered new learner identities, thus enabling them to heal what Hegna [ 68 ] called their wounded learner identities, a fourth challenge to upholding or adjusting education-related goals.

Consequently, such a wounded relationship with learning seems to imply that challenging identity work is a precondition to succeed in the re-enrollment of dropouts in school. Several identity theories propose that peoples’ identities are formed according to how they perceive others perceiving them [ 96 , 97 ], implying the importance of relatedness in identity formation and change. Furthermore, the concept of wounded leaner identities suggests that dropout also implies a fifth challenge, the management of stress through withdrawal from stressful social situations associated with failure and humiliation. The participants in our interviews of long-term dropouts often described to us how one of the characteristics involved in their wounded learner identities, is their experience that teachers and peers and eventually the participants themselves perceive them as lacking the necessary resources to cope with the situation, and how this perception contributed to prolonged stress and failure to uphold their education-related goals [ 16 , 17 , 29 ].

This review has both strengths and limitations. We have pointed to the need to gain an overview of the literature on re-enrollment. The method of narrative review was chosen in order to evaluate a high number of studies with different topics and approaches relating to school dropout and re-enrollment and to synthesize the literature. The process of synthesis rests on the ability of the authors to search, analyze, and summarize the relevant literature. While our approach hopefully has succeeded in producing an overview and understanding of the literature on re-enrollment, there is also a risk that some relevant literature has not been included or that its importance has been underplayed as the literature within this field is considerable in its volume and diversity.

5. Conclusions

We set out to understand more about these high school re-enrollment processes. Focusing on relevant theories and prior research, including our own research, we have identified five main challenges to the motivational process of upholding education-related goals in long-term dropout processes. These challenges are: lack of relatedness, overchallenged self-regulation capacity, compensating for a history of failure, wounded learner identities, and coping with prolonged stress; however, all of these challenges seem to converge on the importance of belonging and social support. The prerequisite for addressing all these challenges seems to be the establishment of a trustful and warm relationship between the students who have dropped out and at least one teacher, and preferably also with other competent and supportive adults who are present in their everyday lives for a substantial period of time. These relationships may provide sufficient social support to aid the students’ inner motivation.

Author Contributions

Both G.H.R. and R.W. contributed to the article’s conceptualization and the drafting and revising of the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

The study was supported by the Publication Fund of UiT The Arctic University of Norway.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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