ABSTRACT
Interest in high school dropouts among policymakers, educational practitioners, and researchers is as great today as anytime over the last 20 years when the two earlier editions of this chapter were published (Rumberger, 1991; Rumberger & Rodriguez, 2002). The issue began to attract more attention in the last 10 years when a series of reports showed that high school graduation rates were much lower than previously thought and lower than they were 30 years earlier (Greene, 2001; Heckman & LaFontaine, 2008). Attention also increased when the federal and state governments began to incorporate graduation rates in their accountability systems. Finally, public figures, such as Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey helped publicize the problem of school dropouts and the national imperative to solve it. President Obama has also called attention to the problem, stating on March 1, 2010 that “Graduation from high school is an economic imperative,” and focusing his education agenda on helping to solve it (U.S. President, 2010).
