High school dropouts often find it difficult to join a job and earn a living. They have to compete with the people who have gained good educational degrees while applying for the jobs. Dropouts often fall in the category of poverty or the persons who live on public assistance and most of them often tend to become single parents. Proper measures to reduce the dropout rate have been taken up but it will take time to regain the earlier status. The rate of dropouts in the US alone is more than 1 million a year. It is necessary to take a joint action against this by the national leaders, schools, communities and the families of the students.

What defines high school dropouts

In simple words, High school dropouts refer to those students who have not completed their school grades and are leaving the school without any proper diploma or equivalent credentials. If a student has been certified under the National Center for Education Statistics for General Educational Development (GED) then they cannot be termed as school dropouts.

Factors that creates High school dropouts

Among the several factors disabilities, socioeconomic background, race ethnicity, absenteeism, academic factors are worth mentioning. A low family income makes the educational fees unaffordable and often leads to dropouts. The rate of dropouts from the middle income family is often very high due to this expensive feature of the educational institutes. 36.4% of the disabled youths drop out the school and the race ethnicity like the Hispanics and African Americans has greater number of dropouts while compared to white and Asian American students. Poor grade, failing the grades, over age, poor attendance records due to several reasons also encourages in dropping out the school. Other factors like occupational opportunities and individual level factors like grade retention, poor academic performance, lack of interest in the schools or the particular school also leads to high school dropouts.