This article has attempted to discern the reasons that students have dropped out of high school over the past half a century, with perceptions by both students and administrators. Overall, there is credence for each type of dropout antecedent, whether being a push, pull, or falling out factor. At the same time, it was apparent that pull factors elicited the highest rates overall for all the studies, while eliciting prominence in four of seven studies. Future scholarship can build upon the awareness of each of these nationally representative studies, and further elucidate reasons as to why each antecedent occurred.
Finally, a significant closing note as well as implication for this manuscript is the direction of future practice. During Fall 2009, NCES launched its most recent nationally representative, longitudinal survey, the High School Longitudinal Study (2009). Although this study has promising elements and targets 25,700 high school freshmen with triennial instruments, it is at the cusp of the ninth-grade year. It is hoped that their research will not lose any of the initial students chosen for the study, yet at the same time those eighth graders who do not continue to their freshmen year may already be lost. The motivation for finding all the students who dropout out remains, to fully understand the dropout problem for students of all ethnicities and language groups, and with this knowledge, thereby learn how to combat and conquer the problem.