ABSTRACT
If education ever gets to the place where there are no dropouts, we can feel secure that we’re getting the job done in our schools. People rarely drop out when they experience a sense of purpose, success, and growth. What will it take for us to realize that the dropout issue is a symptom of unwellness in our schools? It will not require long-term studies and extensive funding to eliminate the dropout problem. It will take making sure that our young people experience success instead of failure in our schools. (Wright, 1989, p. 47)
Statistical manipulations often have the effect of trivializing a significant social and educational problem. For example, dropout rates in nearly all large U.S. cities are tabulated annually, rather than according to how many high school freshmen actually receive diplomas 4 years later. One reliable estimation is provided by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO, 2002). To count dropouts, the GAO uses the all-inclusive definition adopted by the Current Population Survey (CPS), which polls a national sample of households representative of the working-age civilian population. The CPS defines dropouts as “persons neither enrolled in schools nor high school
graduates.” This definition does not exclude such categories as “pregnant teenagers” or “needed at home.” It simply assumes if you are not in school and you have not graduated, you are a dropout.
