1 Recently, social critics have begun commenting on this phenomenon of age classification. Specifically, Howard Chudacoff has explored the development of age norms in his book How Old Are You? Age Consciousness in American Culture (Princeton, N.J., 1989).Google Scholar

2 The word dropout has acquired other meanings as well, thanks to Timothy Leary and the counterculture of the 1960s. This article will only discuss the issue of high school dropouts.Google Scholar

3 One should always be wary of simplified content analysis, and I am not claiming that Figure 1 proves the new dominance of the term dropout in the 1960s. Journal publishing has mushroomed at different points in the twentieth century, and the growth in articles on dropouts certainly reflects an increase in articles on education topics indexed by the two services. However, article titles do reflect journal editors' preference for intriguing subjects or knowledge of catchphrases; thus, the increase in articles on dropouts, and the decline after 1965, is evidence of a definite surge in interest in the topic in the early 1960s.Google Scholar

4 Comments by Linda Burton and Michael Katz have suggested the link between age norms and social institutions. Linda Burton, presenter (Seminar on Work and Welfare, University of Pennsylvania Program to Assess and Revitalize the Social Sciences, 18 Apr. 1991); and Michael Katz, participant (Seminar on Work and Welfare, 9 May 1991). For histories of senescence and retirement, see Haber, Carole, Beyond Sixty-five: The Dilemma of Old Age in America's Past (New York, 1983); and Graebner, William, A History of Retirement: The Meaning and Function of an American Institution, 1885–1978 (New Haven, Conn., 1980). Some may wish to extend this discussion to psychometric notions of normative development or see the term dropout as a deviance label. I am not using the notion of age norms in a psychological sense, and I do not believe the evidence supports such an interpretation.Google Scholar

5 See Katz, Michael B., Doucet, Michael J., and Stern, Mark J., The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), ch. 9, on mid-nineteenth-century transitions to adulthood; and Kett, Joseph F., Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present (New York, 1977), for details of the Progressive Era juvenile organizations.Google Scholar

6 The demographic confirmation of higher graduation trends is too technical to document in this article. See Dorn, Sherman, “Creating the Dropout: An Institutional and Social History of School Failure” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1992), ch. 5.Google Scholar

7 See Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Boston, Mass., 1968), 101–3. For a general discussion of the ineffectiveness of early compulsory schooling laws, see Tyack, David, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 66–71; for one example, see Perlmann, Joel, Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish, Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880–1935 (New York, 1988), 15.Google Scholar

8 Greenwood, J. M., “Report on High School Statistics,” Proceedings of the National Education Association (1900), 340–50.Google Scholar

9 Kantor, Harvey, “Vocationalism in American Education: The Economic and Political Context, 1880–1930,” in Work, Youth, and Schooling: Historical Perspectives on Vocationalism in American Education, ed. Kantor, Harvey and Tyack, David B. (Stanford, Calif., 1982), 15, 43. For the connection between vocational programs and attendance, see Lazerson, Marvin, Origins of the Urban School: Public Education in Massachusetts, 1870–1915 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 138.Google Scholar

10 Johnson, Elizabeth S., “Teenagers at Work,” Education Digest 14 (Dec. 1948): 8; originally in The Child 14 (Oct. 1948): 55.Google Scholar

11 Snepp, Daniel W., “Can We Salvage the Dropouts?” Clearing House 31 (Sep. 1956): 49; Spring, Joel, The Sorting Machine Revisited: National Educational Policy since 1945 (New York, 1989), ch. 2, esp. 51–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Conant, James Bryant, The American High School Today: A First Report to Interested Citizens (New York, 1959), 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Bledsoe, Joseph C., “An Investigation of Six Correlates of Student Withdrawal from High School,” Journal of Educational Research 53 (Sep. 1959): 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Sharp, Selby, “Automobiles and Pupil Adjustment,” Clearing House 32 (Oct. 1957): 83. Sharp's sample size was too small to generalize, let alone account for other possible factors besides car use. Also, Goff, Aaron, “They Dropped Out of School,” Education 70 (Jan. 1950): 332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Johnson, Elizabeth S. and Legg, Caroline E., “Why Young People Leave School,” National Association of Secondary Schools Principals Bulletin 32 (Nov. 1948): 24.Google Scholar

16 Schreiber, Daniel, “The School Dropout—Fugitive from Failure,” National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin 46 (May 1962): 234, 235–36.Google Scholar

17 “Dan Schreiber, 71, Educator Who Worked with Poor Youths,” New York Times, 9 Mar. 1981; Schreiber, , “The School Dropout—Fugitive from Failure,” 241; and the interim and final reports from Schreiber to David Hunter, section 3, PA61-208, Ford Foundation Archives. Schreiber claimed the figure on distribution of free materials in his final report to Hunter, 8 Feb. 1966, 8.Google Scholar

18 “Dropout Tragedies: School Problem, Huge but Ignored,” Life, 2 May 1960, 106A; Kohler, Mary Conway and Fontaine, André, “We Waste a Million Kids a Year,” Saturday Evening Post, 10 Mar. 1962, 16; Burke, Walter J., “The Dropout Problem: Just How Bad Is It?” Clearing House 40 (Sep. 1965): 44.Google Scholar

19 “The Facts about School ‘Dropouts,’” U.S. News and World Report, 26 Aug. 1963, 11; Greene, Bert I., Preventing Student Dropouts (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966), 8; Schreiber, Daniel, “School Dropouts,” NEA Journal 51 (May 1962): 52.Google Scholar

20 Goldberg, Arthur J., “Keep Them in School,” NEA Journal 50 (Apr. 1961): 9. Most of the articles on the income differences between graduates and nongraduates appeared after 1954; for example, Riches, N., “Education and Work of Young People in the Labor Force,” Monthly Labor Review 80 (Dec. 1957): 1457–63.Google Scholar

21 Schreiber, , “School Dropouts,” 51; “The Tragedy of Drop-Outs,” Ebony (Sep. 1961), 48; Conant, James Bryant, Slums and Suburbs: A Commentary on Schools in Metropolitan Areas (New York, 1961), 2, 35.Google Scholar

22 “The Tragedy of Drop-Outs,” 48; O'Neill, John H., “High School Drop-Outs,” Education 84 (Nov. 1963): 157; Cervantes, Lucius F., The Dropout: Causes and Cures (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1965), 197; Simons, Alfred E. and Burke, Nelson S., “The Probable Syndrome in Terms of Educational Experiences Which Precipitates Dropouts, Delinquency, and Eventual Incarceration,” Journal of Negro Education 35 (Winter 1966): 27.Google Scholar

23 James Gilbert discusses concerns about juvenile delinquency in A Cycle of Outrage: America's Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950s (New York, 1986). Graebner, William explains postwar juvenile culture in Coming of Age in Buffalo: Youth and Authority in the Postwar Era (Philadelphia, 1990).Google Scholar

24 “Dropout Tragedies,” 106A–13; Kohler, and Fontaine, , “We Waste a Million Kids a Year,” 16; Conant, , Slums and Suburbs, 50–51; Lichter, Solomon O. et al., The Drop-Outs: A Treatment Study of Intellectually Capable Students Who Drop Out of High School (New York, 1962), 250; Tyack, David and Hansot, Elisabeth, Learning Together: A History of Coeducation in American Schools (New Haven, Conn., 1990), 174–75.Google Scholar

25 Moore, Bernice Milburn, “Mothers, Homemakers, and Wage Earners,” NEA Journal 54 (May 1965): 22–23.Google Scholar

26 Voss, Harwin L., Wendling, Aubrey, and Elliott, Delbert S., “Some Types of High School Dropouts,” Journal of Educational Research 59 (Apr. 1966): 366; Rovello, Michael J., “Dropouts: Some Should Be Dropped Out,” Clearing House 39 (Mar. 1965): 402–3; French, Joseph L., “Characteristics of High School Dropouts,” National Association of Secondary School Principals Bulletin 53 (Feb. 1969): 77; and Arnholter, Ethelwyne G., “School Persistence and Personality Factors,” Personnel and Guidance Journal 35 (Oct. 1956): 107.Google Scholar

27 “Dropout Tragedies,” 108; Newman, Harold, “Dropout Case No. 22,” Clearing House 39 (May 1965): 544–46; and Hoyt, Kenneth B., “The Counselor and the Dropout,” Clearing House 36 (May 1962): 516–17 CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Dentler, Robert A. and Warshauer, Mary Ellen, Big City Dropouts and Illiterates (New York, 1965), 5.Google Scholar

29 George Sylvester Counts, The Selective Character of American Secondary Education (Chicago, 1922). One might ask about the advocates of deschooling. Whatever the merits of their arguments, they are rarely discussed in public debate. The relegation of Ivan Illich and other deschooling advocates to academic discussion demonstrates the extent to which the comprehensive nature of schooling goes unchallenged.Google Scholar

30 Space does not permit an extensive discussion of why the early dropout literature rarely mentioned equity issues or the desegregation controversy then raging. Let it suffice to say that although the Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, insisted that equal opportunity in education had become essential to individuals, neither the arguments nor the language used by the Supreme Court made their way into the material cited here.Google Scholar

31 Greenberger, Ellen and Steinberg, Laurence, When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment (New York, 1986); for an introduction to the theory of segmented labor markets, see Gordon, David M., Edwards, Richard, and Reich, Michael, Segmented Work, Divided Workers: The Historical Transformation of Labor in the United States (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

32 For an example of an attempted historical perspective from the 1960s, see Schreiber, Daniel, “An Introduction to the School Dropout,” in Guidance and the School Dropout, ed. Schreiber, Daniel (Washington, D.C., 1964), 2. For a criticism of overcredentialing, see Freedman, Richard B., The Overeducated American (New York, 1976); and Sedlak, Michael W. et al., Selling Students Short: Classroom Bargains and Academic Reforms in the American High School (New York, 1986), ch. 2. The quotation about the value of education versus the value of a credential is from Labaree's, David F. The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market and the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838–1939 (New Haven, Conn., 1988), 178.Google Scholar

33 Tyack, David, Lowe, Robert, and Hansot, Elisabeth, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 20, 144–49; Krug, Edward A., The Shaping of the American High School, Vol. 2: 1920–1941 (Madison, Wis., 1972), 218.Google Scholar

34 Cremin, Lawrence A., Popular Education and Its Discontents (New York, 1990), 12–15, 19–20.Google Scholar