ABSTRACT
Any number of studies can be pointed to in support of the school failuredelinquency relationship. Polk and Haerty (1966) note that students who do poorly in school and are not committed to scholastic achievement admit to higher levels of deviant behavior. Hirschi (1969), studying approximately 4,000 boys, nds that youths with low commitment to school and educational achievement display higher levels of self-reported delinquency. ornberry et al. (1985) show that students who drop out of school exhibit higher levels of delinquency and adult criminal behavior than do high school graduates. Jarjoura (1993) species the dropout eect by demonstrating that the dropout-delinquency relationship only holds when the reason for dropping out is related to school problems. Studies by Gold and Mann (1972), West and Farrington (1973), and Jerse and Fakouri (1978) report that delinquents generally achieve lower grades than non-delinquents. A wide variety of other studies, using both self-report and ocial measures of deviance and various measures of academic achievement, support the academic achievement-delinquency relationship (Empey and Lubbeck, 1971; Kelly and Balch, 1971; Kelly and Pink, 1975; Phillips and Kelly, 1979; Polk and Schafer, 1972; Polk et al., 1974; President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, 1967).
