List of common reasons students say they have dropped out:

(Schwartz)

• Didn't like school in general or the school they were attending.

• Were failing, getting poor grades, or couldn't keep up with school work.
• Didn't get along with teachers and/or students.
• Had disciplinary problems, were suspended, or expelled.
• Didn't feel safe in school.
• Got a job, had a family to support, or had trouble managing both school and work. Got married, got pregnant, or became a parent.
• Had a drug or alcohol problem.

What defines a dropout?

Dropping out is defined as leaving school without a high school diploma or equivalent credential such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Dropout rates aren’t the same for all of us, but they do affect us all. Here’s a breakdown of a few samples:

Table 1. Grade 10-12 Dropout Rates of Students Aged 15-24 Based on Ethnicity

Table 2. A simple breakdown of dropout rates based on gender

The Facts:

Fact 1:

Every year, more than 1 million students drop out of high school in the United States alone. That works out to be around 6000 a day or one every 29 seconds.

Fact 2:

The event dropout rate in 2004 was recorded to be 4.7% across all regions in the US

Fact 3:

Students with disabilities are also more likely to drop out. The National Transition Study estimates that as many as 36.4% of disabled youth drop out of school before completing a diploma or certificate.

Fact 4:

National data show that students from low-income families are 2.4 times more likely to drop out of school than are children from middle-income families, and 10.5 times more likely than students from high-income families.

Fact 5:

The individual stresses and frustrations associated with dropping out have social implications as well: dropouts make up a disproportionate percentage of the nation’s prisons and death row inmates. One research study pointed out that 82% of America’s prisoners are high school dropouts.

Fact 6:

One-third of high school dropouts were put on in-school suspension, suspended, or put on probation, and more than 15% were either expelled or told they couldn't return.

Fact 7:

70 percent were confident they could have graduated, including a majority with low GPAs.

Fact 8:

Nearly 70 percent said they were not motivated to work hard and two-thirds would have worked harder if more were demanded of them.

Fact 9:

Dropouts earn $9,200 less per year than high school graduates and more than $1 million less over a lifetime than college graduates

Fact 10:

Dropouts were more than twice as likely as high school graduates to slip into poverty in a single year and three times more likely than college graduates to be unemployed in 2004

Fact 11:

Dropouts are more than eight times as likely to be in jail or prison as high school graduates

Fact 12:

There are nearly 2,000 high schools in the U.S. where 40 percent of the typical freshman class leaves school by its senior year

Fact 13:

The dropout problem is likely to increase substantially through 2020 unless significant improvements are made

References:

Definition of a dropout:
"National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)". U.S. Department of Education. June 10th, 2007
<http://nces.ed.gov/>

Fact 7-13
http://www.silentepidemic.org/epidemic/statistics-facts.htm