The minimum dropout age and student victimization

Over the years, the minimum dropout age has been raised to 18 in 21 states. Although these policy changes are promoted for their educational benefits, they have been shown to reduce crimes committed by youths in the affected age groups. However, an unintended consequence of increasing the minimum dropout age could be the displacement of crime from the streets to schools. We use data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys to estimate the relationship between minimum dropout age laws and student victimization. Our results suggest that higher minimum dropout ages increase the likelihood that females and younger students report missing school for fear of their safety and younger students are more likely to report being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Our results also yield some evidence that students are more likely to report being victims of in-school theft when the minimum dropout age is higher.     

Does intensive coaching reduce school dropout? Evidence from a randomized experiment

School dropout is an important social and economic problem. This paper investigates the effect of an intensive coaching program aimed at reducing school dropout rates among students aged 16–20. Students received support and guidance with their study activities, personal problems and internships in firms. The coaching program lasted one or two years. Students were randomly assigned to the coaching program. We find that one year of coaching reduced school dropout rates by more than 40% from 17 to 10 percentage points. The second year of coaching further reduced school dropout by 1 percentage point. The program is most effective for students with a high ex-ante probability of dropping out, such as students no longer obliged to be in formal education, male students, and students not living with both parents. Cost-benefit analysis suggests that one year of coaching is likely to yield a net social gain.     

Education for all: quasi-experimental estimates of the impacts of compulsory primary education in Hong Kong

This paper examines the causal impacts of Hong Kong’s 1971 policy of free compulsory education on students’ educational attainment. Using a regression discontinuity method and Hong Kong Census data, this study compares children born just before and just after the month in which the compulsory-education law came into effect. The results show that the law reduces approximately 10 percent of the dropout probability by age 12 and 8 percent of the dropout probability by age 15. The effect is substantial considering that approximately 90 percent of primary-school-age children were already in school in Hong Kong when the policy was implemented. The policy has larger impacts for socially and economically disadvantaged children, and the law also increases their probability of obtaining an education beyond middle school. Robustness is tested with several sensitivity checks. The results will help policy makers and stakeholders better understand the potential efficacy of mandated education policies and increasing educational access to targeted populations, especially for developing economies.     

Towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Revisiting language of instruction in Tanzanian secondary schools

Research has been conducted on the detrimental effects of using a foreign language for learning in Tanzania’s secondary schools. While most studies recommend the use of a familiar language for instruction, the use of a foreign language in secondary education in Tanzania has been maintained. This has many consequences on the quality of education, and contributes to student dropout. Presenting a study carried out in the semi-rural areas of Dar es Salaam region in Tanzania, this article examines the extent to which language of instruction (LOI) contributes to school dropout. It postulates that the use of a foreign language for teaching and learning in Tanzanian secondary schools hinders the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The study’s findings, drawn from exploratory and qualitative narrative research, indicate that, notwithstanding the presence of several other factors, the use of a foreign language as LOI is a major contributor to student dropout. The use of an unfamiliar language of instruction contributes to students’ lack of interest in and disengagement from learning, which ultimately pushes them out of the school system. This is because students usually perform poorly when an unfamiliar language is used as the language of examination and in classroom interaction. The study also reveals that the voices of both teachers and students are not in consonance with what would be expected in an ideal classroom teaching and learning environment. Student dropout from secondary education caused by an inappropriate LOI leads to myriad further problems which, in turn, negatively affect realisation of the SDGs in Tanzania. This article, therefore, concludes that LOI needs to be strongly factored into the development agenda. In order to ensure equitable access to quality secondary education, as required by SDG 4, the Government of Tanzania needs to adopt a language policy that promotes effective teaching and equal access to quality education in secondary schools.     

The impact of community schools on student dropout in pre-vocational education

Dropout prevention is highly ranked on the political agenda in many countries. It remains unclear, however, how dropout can be effectively reduced, as many different factors determine student dropout. Community schools recognize this and aim to modernize education such that it better accommodates students’ personal needs. As a result these schools cooperate more with external organizations, stimulate parental involvement in the educational process, and organize more extracurricular activities. This study examines the impact of Dutch community schools on student dropout. It focuses in particular on pre-vocational education, because dropout is particularly high in this educational track. Moreover, the focus is on the city of Rotterdam because this city is a frontrunner in the Netherlands in establishing community schools. Use is made of unique registration data on all Rotterdam students who were enrolled in pre-vocational education between 2004 and 2008. The impact of community schools is identified by exploiting the fact that community schools were not created before the beginning of the school year 2006/2007. This enables us to estimate the community school impact by means of a difference-in-differences estimation model combined with an iterative matching approach. The estimation results suggest that community schools are as effective as regular schools with respect to dropout reduction. Community school subsidies do not seem to contribute to reducing dropout.     

Despite Our Best Intention: Students Relate How Social Promotion Hurt Them and What Changes They Believe will Help Them

The paper researches the practice of social promotion, where students who fail due to a lack of comprehension of grade level material are promoted along with their classmates who passed. Student and parent interviews, student surveys, and data from students’ graduation records are used to determine that social promotion does not improve the students’ education, instead students who are socially promoted are more likely to dropout of high school, less likely to graduate high school on time or at all, and the alternative practices are needed if students are to be successful and graduate high school.     

Dropping out: Why are students leaving junior high in China's poor rural areas?

Despite requirements of and support for universal education up to grade 9, there are concerning reports that poor rural areas in China suffer from high and maybe even rising dropout rates. Although aggregated statistics from the Ministry of Education show almost universal compliance with the 9-year compulsory education law, there have been few independent, survey-based studies regarding dropout rates in China. Between 2009 and 2010 we surveyed over 7800 grade 7, 8, and 9 students from 46 randomly selected junior high schools in four counties in two provinces in North and Northwest China to measure the dropout rate. We also used the survey data to examine factors correlated with dropping out, such as the opportunity cost of going to school, household poverty, and poor academic performance. According to the study's findings, drop out rates between grade 7 and grade 8 reached 5.7% and dropout rates between grade 8 and grade 9 reached 9.0%. In sum, among the total number of students attending junior high school during the first month of the first term of grade 7, 14.2% had left school by the first month of grade 9. Dropout rates were even higher for students that were older, from poorer families (and families in which the parents were not healthy), or were performing more poorly academically. We conclude that although the government's policy of reducing tuition and fees for junior high students may be necessary, it is not sufficient to solve the dropout problem.     

Why do primary school students drop out in poor,rural China? A portrait sketched in a remote mountain village

In this paper we consider why students in poor and rural regions of China are dropping out of school in numbers that may be greater than official statistics admit. With questions about education quality among the most intractable in Education for All initiatives across the developing world, we sketch a portrait of education in a remote mountain village community as it might be painted from the perspective of a primary school dropout: a portrait in which education quality is well in the shadows. We indicate the limits of the view that commonly relates the phenomenon of school dropout primarily with poverty, a lack of school resources and inequities in resource distribution, suggesting that the picture is more nuanced and subtly shaded at local levels. Our research indicates that the education system in the radically transitional society that China is today brings with it values that clash with those of its citizens, particularly those who are marginalized and cannot easily adjust, perhaps because of their disadvantaged socio-economic, cultural and geographic location. In an ethnographic study in a poor, rural area in Yunnan province, we found significant disjunctions in values: between those of the school system and those of parents with regard to the aims and purposes of education; between those of the curriculum and those of teachers with regard to their role in the classroom vis-à-vis knowledge as represented in textbooks; between those of government education policy and the concerns of the remote rural poor with regard to resource distribution; and between those of a newly market-oriented society and educational ideals about teachers’ and students’ abilities. We also offer some insight into the scale and complexity of the problems associated with a lack of education quality and students’ dropping out of school as a consequence, which cannot be revealed by the official 1% dropout rate.     

中小学生教育需求指标体系研究——基于西藏农牧区的调查与思考

国家对西藏教育投入的增长速度越来越快,但西藏农牧区中小学生的辍学率仍然不低,本质上反映了学校教育未能完全满足学生的教育需求意愿.运用主因素分析方法发现:学生教育需求指标体系主要由教育内容、办学形式、提供方式、教育效用、快乐情感体验需求5个一级指标,以及本民族内容比重等24个二级指标构成.教育需求指标的建立要求学校教育必须充分关注学生的教育需求,并将学生的需求贯穿学校教育的每一环节.     

Does school time matter?—On the impact of compulsory education age on school dropout

A straightforward way to prevent students from leaving education without a higher secondary diploma is increasing the compulsory education age. The idea is that, by staying longer in school, more students eventually obtain a higher secondary diploma. This paper examines the impact of a one-year increase in compulsory school-age on dropping out of secondary education by a difference-in-differences analysis. For this, we exploit a recent compulsory education policy reform in the Netherlands. After controlling for confounding factors and observable covariates, we find that the one year increase in compulsory school-age reduces dropout by 2.5 percentage points. The effect, however, is entirely situated in the group non-liable to the policy reform. We observe that native Dutch vocational students, mostly without retention in grade, but also without a higher secondary diploma at hand, more often left school in the immediate period before the policy reform. Given the economic revival at that time, this may reflect anticipation of labor market opportunities.     

中国远程教育学生流失现状及归因

随着计算机和网络的广泛应用,远程教育学生规模不断扩大;与此同时,学生流失问题也日益凸显。较高的学生流失率增加了远程教育机构的生均办学成本,给远程教育机构的社会声誉造成负面影响。因此,研究学生流失规律及影响因素,以降低学生流失率,成为提高远程教学质量很好的切入点。已有研究采用访谈、问卷、描述性统计等方法,对流失率与学习阶段、性别、年龄、专业等的关系进行了探究。按照持续比较法,我国远程教育学生流失的影响因素包括学习者因素、教育机构因素、环境因素3大类和11小类：人口统计学因素、学前准备及技能、学习心理因素、学业表现、专业及课程设计、教育机构支持、交互、工学矛盾、家庭支持、计划外事件和社会支持。降低学生流失率一方面可以基于我国远程教育的现实情景,对学生流失各因素间的相互关系进行研究,在此基础上建立结构化的学生流失模型,对学生流失的决策过程进行清晰的解释;另一方面可以采用数据挖掘方法,利用教务管理系统和学习管理系统数据,建立学生流失预测模型,在流失行为发生前发现潜在的流失学生,以便教育机构可以有针对性的采取挽留措施。     

Head Teachers' Perspectives on School Drop-Out in Secondary Schools in Rural Punjab,Pakistan

This study investigates head teachers' perspectives of the school dropout problem at public secondary schools in rural Punjab, Pakistan. The study is based on qualitative methods and included interviews to collect primary data. Sixteen districts of the Punjab where secondary school dropout rate is above 20% were purposively selected for the study. The findings indicate that—other than some socioeconomic and individual factors—different exam patterns at primary, elementary, and secondary levels; easy promotion policy in early classes; English medium syllabus; substandard educational background of students; high failure rate in class 9; and top-down pressures on teachers to perform nonacademic duties are major causes of children dropping out from school. The findings of the study suggest that only through implementation of a socio-culturally compatible syllabus—a corresponding examination system for all levels—allowing students to repeat class 9 in case they fail, setting teachers free from nonteaching duties and providing extra financial support to economically underprivileged students can significantly prevent school dropout at secondary level. The study further argues that easy promotion policy in early classes may retain more children at school but it causes high rates of dropout from secondary classes.     

Freshman Year Dropouts: Interactions Between Student and School Characteristics and Student Dropout Status

Data from a large school district in the southwestern United States were analyzed to investigate relations between student and school characteristics and high school freshman dropout patterns. Application of a multilevel logistic regression model to student dropout data revealed evidence of school-to-school differences in student dropout rates and school-to-school differences in the relation between student characteristics and student dropout status. Investigation of the school differences revealed that school organization and schools' social context were statistically significant predictors of several of the dropout outcomes. Evidence of school context and school practice effects on student dropout outcomes suggests that school personnel may need to consider how characteristics of the school environment interact with the background characteristics of students when developing and focusing dropout prevention strategies. Implications for school policy and practice are discussed.     

Interventions in education to prevent STEM pipeline leakage

The so-called leaking STEM pipeline (dropout in STEM education) has been the subject of many studies. The large interest of scholars in plausible causes of this leakage has resulted in a number of meta-reviews describing factors at system, school and student level related to interest and persistence in STEM education. The STEM pipeline discussion has also resulted in a large number of programmes aimed at enhancing STEM interest and persistence in STEM education. Although these programmes have been widely evaluated, there seems to be no consensus about which interventions are successful in raising interest in STEM or persistence in STEM education. This study reports the results of a systematic review of empirical studies in which the effectiveness of STEM-related interventions are assessed. Initially, 538 studies were found. The quality analyses showed that only a few of these evaluation studies are designed in such a way that it is likely that the found effects are caused by the intervention. Although some potentially effective interventions were found, this review shows that there is still a need for research into the effectiveness of those programmes, especially with regard to programmes preventing talented and initially motivated STEM students to drop out of STEM education.     

Staying on track: behavioral engagement of at-risk and non-at-risk students in post-secondary vocational education

Behavioral disengagement from school is a proximal predictor of dropout. Therefore, the enhancement of behavioral engagement is a useful point of entry for dropout prevention. In this study, we examine the behavioral engagement of at-risk and non-at-risk students in Dutch senior vocational education (SVE), a sector confronted with high dropout rates. Using multilevel regression analyses, we assess the role of students’ background characteristics and perceived fit with the school environment in their behavioral engagement. Findings indicate that students in highly urbanized areas are significantly less engaged in school. The perceived proportion of autonomous work is most prominently correlated to students’ behavioral engagement. Whereas in general SVE students are more engaged if their program requires little autonomous work from students, engineering students appear to favor autonomous work forms.     

Social Inequalities in Early School Leaving: The Role of Educational Institutions and the Socioeconomic Context

Reducing the number of early school leavers, those who quit education without at least a high school degree, is a key objective of educational policy throughout Europe. Previous research has shown that in particular youngsters from disadvantaged families face relatively high risks of school dropout. In this paper we use data from the 2009 ad hoc module of the Labour Force Survey to examine how macro-level determinants influence school dropout risks among different social groups. Our results indicate that both the design of the educational system (tracking age, extent of vocational education) and characteristics of the socioeconomic context (poverty rate, unemployment patterns) have an impact on the social distribution of school dropout risk.     

Teens’ alcohol consumption and schooling

While research outside economics has found that drinking has a negative effect on cognitive skills, some economists have failed to find any negative relationship between drinking and academic performance. This paper argues that the reason for this discrepancy is due to the way education is measured in the economic literature. Herein, binge drinking in the senior year of high school is found to reduce the probability of receiving a high school diploma and to increase the probability of graduating with a General Education Development (GED). Moreover, this study finds that alcohol policies do not affect the dropout rate measured at the age of 25, but they do affect the probability that a student will graduate on time. In conclusion, bingeing is found to be responsible for inducing individuals to temporarily drop out of school. Eventually, these individuals return to school to complete their education, most likely by obtaining a GED diploma.     

学习支持服务与开放教育流生率关系的调查研究——以宁波电大物流管理专业为例

随着社会的发展及开放教育生源的变化,开放教育流生率问题日益成为开放教育较为关注的问题．有效的学习支持应能较大程度上降低开放教育的流生率．但从根本上来说,良好的学习支持应能引发学生学习兴趣、提高教与学的质量,从而提高开放教育质量,提升开放教育品牌,最终降低开放教育的流生率．     

One foot out the school door? Interpreting the risk for dropout upon the transition to post-secondary vocational education

Many students drop out in the first year after a school transition. Most commonly used indicators of an increased risk for dropout reveal little of the mechanisms that push or pull students out of school. In this study, we look at the association of a set of common risk indicators with students’ supportive resources and school experiences upon the transition to post-secondary vocational education in the Netherlands. Multilevel regression analyses on a diverse sample of 1438 students indicate that most sociodemographic risk indicators relate to less access to supportive resources for school, whereas personal circumstances outside school that are associated with an increased risk for dropout correlate with negative school experiences. Students from lower educated or poor families and students who use drugs, have debts, or are delinquent score negative in both domains, suggesting that those students make the transition with one foot out the school door.     

A Chance Lost in the Prevention of School Dropout? Teacher-Student Relationships Mediate the Effect of Mental Health Problems on Noncompletion of Upper-Secondary School

There is increasing awareness of the challenges that young people who do not complete upper-secondary school may encounter. The aim of the current study was to investigate teacher-student relationship as a possible mechanism to reduce the associations between mental health problems, grades, and subsequent noncompletion. Mental health problems and teacher-student relationships were assessed through students’ self-reports in 10th grade, and linked with Norwegian registries of education and sociodemography (n?=?10,931). A dual-factor serial mediator model was specified, allowing the effect of mental health problems on school dropout to be mediated by the teacher-student relationship via school grades. Results indicated that teacher-student relationship is a potential mechanism to reduce the negative associations between mental health problems and later noncompletion. However, students with mental health problems seemed to experience less supportive teachers; therefore, interventions targeting teacher-student relationships may be required. The patterns were similar between genders.