Raising Standards and Retaining Students: The Impact of the Reform Recommendations on Potential Dropouts

This paper examines the potential influence of school reform policies on the high school dropout rate. We summarize a diverse set of reports on American education that recommend increasing academic standards in schools as a means for improving secondary school performance. We also describe our understanding of the processes by which youngsters drop out of school. In light of these diverse literatures, we show that raising standards may have both positive and negative consequences for potential dropouts. On the positive side, raising standards may encourage greater student effort and time on schoolwork, and thus lead to higher levels of achievement. On the negative side, raising standards may increase academic stratification in schools and cause more school failure, with no apparent remedies. We propose an agenda for further research designed to clarify the impact of the higher standards.