Students who drop out of high school tend to feel unsafe at school, socially isolated, and picked on by their teachers, according to a new study by Stefanie DeLuca, IPR graduate fellow, and James Rosenbaum (IPR-Education and Social Policy).

Peer threats, especially when combined with social isolation and teacher disparagement, cause students to drop out of high school, according to the authors. Their findings, published in an IPR working paper, examine how students’ experiences affect their withdrawal behaviors in school (not doing homework, being tardy, cutting class) and their decisions to leave school. They also consider how teachers respond to students experiencing these threats and teachers’ influence on dropout decisions.

National attention on school safety has increased following several school shootings. Clearly, school violence is a problem. In 1992, the year studied, 14% of students reported being threatened with a weapon, and 24.6 % threatened without a weapon, while 5.1% were injured with a weapon, and 12.8% injured without a weapon. The authors measured threats as whether students in their sample had been threatened, got into a physical fight, or generally felt unsafe at school.

Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, the authors find that dropout decisions are factors of social experiences as well as background influences (factors like test scores, race, gender, socioeconomic status and whether a school is public or private and urban or suburban).

“These results confirm prior research that indicates that dropping out is not a sudden behavior, rather it is strongly predicted by the various indicators of withdrawal that are evident much earlier than dropping out,” according to the authors.

Also striking is how the factors work together.

For example, academic failure alone does not always lead a student to drop out. But it may start a chain of events—being teased by other students and by teachers—that could lead a student to leave school.
In another example, the authors found that by itself, teacher disparagement does not account for dropouts, but when paired with peer threats, it does affect dropping out.

“One possible inference is that teacher disparagement of a student tells other students that this student will get less support from teachers. Perhaps teacher disparagement unintentionally targets some students as potential victims. Alternatively, perhaps some third factor, say student negativity or ‘bullying,’ leads both to teacher disparagement and to threats from peers. … It is clear that teachers are not counteracting the effects of threats, as one might hope.”

The authors provide some policy suggestions for teachers, guidance counselors and administrators:

- Form smaller classes for more supportive and personal environments for teachers and students.

- Reduce the danger in highly dangerous schools, and address students’ individual safety concerns in relatively safe schools.

- Address academic concerns swiftly so they do not combine with other problems.

- Consider social interactions, particularly those that lead to violence, when designing dropout prevention programs.

(The working paper, “Are dropout decisions related to safety concerns, social isolation, and teacher disparagement?” is available from IPR’s publications department.)