ABSTRACT
After more than a decade of neglect by policymakers, educators, and social scientists, culminating in its omission from consideration in the 1983 report A Nation at Risk, the problem of dropouts or early school leavers enjoyed renewed attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was capped by the inclusion of “increasing the high school completion rate to 90 percent” as one of six national education goals (Bush 1991). Although the reasons for this revival of attention are no doubt many and varied (Rumberger 1987), three stand out in contemporary discussions of the problems of the U.S. educational system.
