President Barack Obama's call for every state to require school attendance until age 18 may spark a flurry of action in some statehouses, but changing attendance laws will do little by itself to drive down the nation's dropout rates, experts on the issue say. In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama said states should require…

Mental health problems--and depression in particular--have been rising internationally. The link between poor mental health and poor educational outcomes is particularly interesting in the case of the UK which has a low international ranking both on measures of child wellbeing and the probability of early drop-out from the labour market and…

High school dropouts fare substantially worse than their peers on a wide variety of long-term economic outcomes. On average, a dropout earns less money, is more likely to be in jail, is less healthy, is less likely to be married, and is unhappier than a high school graduate. But despite this growing education gap, dropout rates have remained…

This fourth annual update on America's high school dropout crisis shows that for the first time the nation is on track to meet the goal of a 90 percent high school graduation rate by the Class of 2020--if the pace of improvement from 2006 to 2010 is sustained over the next 10 years. The greatest gains have occurred for the students of color and…

The aim of this paper is to analyze the selection process at work before and after compulsory schooling by assessing the determinants of school failures, dropouts, and upper secondary school decisions of young Italians. The data-set is built combining individual data by the Labor Force Survey and aggregate data on local labor markets and school…

A common concern among policy makers in Europe is the low level of qualifications of some school leavers and the possible consequences of this for their life chances and for countries' economic prosperity. This article considers the impact of young people's low levels of educational attainment on their later life chances, especially on labour…

Profiles the current trend of parents' choosing to educate their children at home. Provides data on the numbers and motivations of such parents and examines the surrounding legal issues. Challenges the premise of compulsory schooling on the basis of achievement data that document the superior performance of home-schooled children. (KH)

The central message of this report is that while some students drop out because of significant academic challenges, most dropouts are students who could have, and believe they could have, succeeded in school. This survey of young people who left high school without graduating suggests that, despite career aspirations that require education beyond…

In the second of a two-part series, this paper looks at the global spread of school dropout and at the factors that keep elementary school-aged children outside education. In order to have a more complete picture of the dropout problem, it necessary to take into account pupils who do not continue their education beyond primary education or who…