Publisher      Education and Urban Society, 19(3)
Page Numbers     250-269
Summary     This article suggests that missing from any attempt to address the problem of increasing numbers of dropouts is a coherent and easily accessible source of data on the actual and at-risk population of young people. It describes problems in record-keeping that are common to most school districts in the United States, and whose solution is a necessary precondition to effective dropout or pushout prevention. The basic premise is that existing data sources are biased and skewed as a consequence of the way they are compiled and maintained. Hence, evaluators, policy analysts, and university-based researchers make statements about dropouts that are misguided, and ask questions that are impossible to answer. They also design programs that do not match the needs of the actual dropout population, because the characteristics of that population have been badly described.