Understanding why students drop out of school is the key to addressing this major educational problem. Yet identifying the causes of dropping out is extremely difficult to do because, like other forms of educational achievement (e.g., test scores), it is influenced by an array of proximal and distal factors related to both the individual student and to the family, school, and community settings in which the student lives. The complexity of this phenomenon is illustrated by the variety of reasons that dropouts report for leaving school. Dropouts from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 eighth graders reported a wide variety of reasons for those who dropped out: school-related reasons were mentioned by 77 percent, family-related reasons were mentioned by 34 percent, and work-related reasons were mentioned by 32 percent (Berktold et al., 1998, Table 6). The most specific reasons were did not like school (46 percent), failing school (39 percent), could not get along with teachers (29 percent), and got a job (27 percent).