Why We Drop Out: Understanding and Disrupting Student Pathways to Leaving School

It is important to ask what archaic and institutionalized structures in schools could - and should - be dismantled in order to broaden our conception of student attendance and thus, include more students in school beyond those who conform to traditional structures. Asking these questions is an important next step, and it begins with the kind of full and participant-driven understanding of the problems that Why We Drop Out provides. --Journal of Children and Poverty "I appreciate the authors' inclusion of student voice, which offers the capacity to view youth dropout through a different lens. I also value their explicit recommendations for school and system improvement. So often in research practitioners get the "what to do" and not the "how to do it"; this text gives both...The authors leave readers with a choice, and I am optimistic after reading this text that our nation can transform from being one at risk to one that can and will heed the calls to disrupt the pathways to dropping out of school." --Harvard Educational Review