Students drop out of school because of a variety of family, economic, and racial factors that can be categorized as either alienation, lack of motivation, or disadvantage. The key to reducing the dropout rate is helping youth to overcome their sense of disconnection. Students with low motivation to attend school have shown improvement in school…

Preventing dropouts is the main topic of the 12 publications reviewed in this annotated bibliography. A statistical analysis of dropouts in Portland, Oregon, revealed that the correlation by school was far greater than correlation by residential area. In another study, approximately 155 droputs were questioned and most believed that the school…

Literature from the past three decades does not suggest a specific role for school counselors in combating the school dropout problem. A search of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database for the years 1984-1986 produced only 15 items indexed under terms related to school counseling or the school counselor's role. Ideally a…

This practice-application digest addresses what vocational education can do to reduce the almost 30 percent dropout rate among U.S. students. The first section describes factors that place students at risk, focusing on factors included in the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction's definition of the term "at-risk." In the next…

Presented in this annotated bibliography of 12 publications on students at risk are descriptions of (1) a study of 100 Austin, Texas, dropouts that identifies characteristics and conditions of high-risk students; (2) a study recommending a variety of programs to improve the progression of high-risk high school and college students; (3) a manual…

This ERIC digest examines the extent of early school leaving among migrants, conditions that precede early school leaving, common features of programs that work to retrieve dropouts, and illustrative programs that exhibit these features. The Migrant Attrition Project estimates a 45% national dropout rate of migrant students. Conditions that lead…

The increase in the number of youth under age 18 enrolling in federally funded adult basic and literacy education programs is a trend that is putting increasing pressures on programs designed to serve an adult population. Documenting the extent of the trend is difficult due to the way in which federal statistics on age of program participants have…