Students drop out of school for a wide variety of reasons. Programs to discourage dropping out must therefore accommodate the actual needs of individual students rather than aim at the assumed needs of the "typical dropout." This document reviews school policies and programs that could affect dropout tendencies positively. Among these innovative methods are providing alternatives to traditional student promotion policies, offering early childhood education programs, structuring education in nontraditional ways, coordinating social services for student support, operating high school equivalency programs, creating alternative learning environments suited to the specific needs of dropouts, adopting inschool suspension policies, and involving parents in dropout prevention. Examples are drawn from successful programs in New York State. (PGD)