Why do kids drop out of school?

Introduction

One of the most common features of those who fall into the characterization of juvenile delinquent is a failure to graduate from high school or more commonly termed - a drop out. In order to address the question of "why do kids drop out of school?" this essay will introduce three broad concepts that have been shown in the literature to be of critical importance in the relative risk of a child failing to graduate from high school. The three concepts are causes of school failures; relative graduation rates of different socioeconomic and ethnic communities and the problem of truancy.

Causes of school failures

A recurrent theme in the study of causes of school failure is students with poor academic performance (Siegel and Welsh, p 216). There are a number of factors that affect any individual student's relative risk of poor academic performance one of these is learning disabilities (Mishel and Joydeep, 2006, p 26). Particularly affected by the challenges of having students with learning disabilities are schools with great scarcity of resources (Mishel and Joydeep, 2006, p 23). Class size has been described as having a large influence on the ability for students with learning disabilities to have appropriate intervention aide and for the educators to be able to maintain that student's self-esteem and hope for successful high school graduation (Mishel and Joydeep, 2006, p 23).

Relative graduation rates

Certain student population sub groups are at increased risk of dropping out (Siegel and Welsh, p 217). Perhaps two of the most commonly identified groups are those of varying socioeconomic status (SES) and those whose first language is not English or English as a second language learners (ESL). Student ethnicity was shown to be more powerful a predictor of high school graduation rates that the background of ESL (Freeman and Fox (2005, p 25). Specific ethnic groups were at higher risk of dropping out of high school than others, for example Asian American ESL students' high school graduation rate was not significantly different to white American English Native speaking students (Freeman and Fox, 2005, p 32). In contrast however graduation rates of Hispanic American ESL students' high school graduation rates fell disappointingly low compared to White American non-ESL students (Freeman and Fox, 2005, p 32) with reports ranging form twenty seven percent (Mishel and Joydeep, 2006, p 73) to sixty-three

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