Despite the legal mandate for fulltime school participation between the ages of 6 and 18 and the mandate for high school completion, many youths do not fulfill these expectations and are viewed as dropouts. To investigate the characteristics of seventh and eighth grade students who leave school and the reasons why they do so, school personnel in 39 Ohio school districts were interviewed through phone calls and selected school visits. These districts accounted collectively for 94.5 percent (N=436) of seventh grade dropouts and 87.3 percent (N=670) of eighth grade dropouts in the state. Although discrepancies in local district data collection methodologies and definitions of a dropout were found, it was established that the largest single category of dropouts were those individuals whom the school districts could not locate. The reasons students left school included expulsion, pregnancy, being over age for grade, institutionalization, running away, and several other low incidence reasons, e.g., marriage, family responsibility, parent request, and military service. Educator observations on why students leave school include lack of family support for education, troubled homes, and "low normal" intelligence. Improvements in record keeping, disciplinary practices, particularly in regard to expulsion, programs for pregnant teenagers and teenage parents, and additional attention to special academic needs should be undertaken to remedy dropout problems. (Appendices include the data collection form and a detailed report from the Cleveland School District listing dropout data by race, age, and sex). (BL)