2012 Articles

Why Tenth Graders Fail to Finish High School: A Dropout Typology Latent Class Analysis

Bowers, Alex J.; Sprott, Ryan

A large percentage of the students who drop out of K-12 schools in the United States do so at the end of high school, at some point after grade 10. Yet we know little about the differences between different types of students who drop out of the end of high school. The purpose of this study is to examine a typology of high school dropouts from a large nationally representative dataset (ELS:2002) using latent class analysis (LCA). We found three significantly different types of dropouts; Quiet, Jaded, and Involved. Based on this typology of three subgroups, we discuss implications for future dropout intervention research, policy, and practice.