DROPOUT STUDIES

High dropout and low graduation rates of minority groups have been the subject of U.S. statistical research for decades. American Indian and Alaska Native students are considered the most at-risk for failing to complete high school and college. However, not all dropout studies can be trusted, due to widely varying statistical methods, incomparable data sets, and frequent student transfers. In addition, some students stop their education for a period of time, then return to school. This pattern is common among American Indian/Alaska Native students. Called "stopouts, "these students are counted in dropout statistics.

The way dropout rates are reported also has an impact on the data. For example, Alaska has a highly mobile population. The Department of Education and Early Development reports nearly a 20 percent transient rate statewide, which means that only 80 percent of students are enrolled in the same school for at least 170 days of the 180-day school year.

Alaska collects enrollment head counts on October 1 of each school year. Students enrolled before or after this date are not reported in the schools head count. Therefore, students that move to another district after October 1 are counted as dropouts in the district from which they move. Most of the students who actually drop out do so between the ninth and tenth grades.

Distance learning, correspondence schools, and home schooling also inflate dropout rates. Students that enroll in these programs generally have left a traditional school and are often shown as dropouts from that school. On the other hand, dropout statistics may be artificially lower in some districts. It is often assumed that children who announce they "plan to enroll in correspondence "will later re-enroll in the district, so they are left on the enrollment books. Those students, however, may never re-enroll in that district.

Dropout studies also have not paid enough attention to the reasons that Native American students give for leaving school (Lomawaima, 1995; Deyhle & Swisher, 1997; Swisher & Hoisch, 1992; and others) . Alaska Native and American Indian students drop out for a variety of cultural, social, and economic reasons as well as school, home and student-based reasons. Many of the cultural reasons are explored in this paper. Examples of "school-based "reasons (Reyhner, 1992) include uncaring teachers or inappropriate curriculum. "Home-based "reasons are lack of parental support and speaking English as a second language (Lomawaima, 1995) . "Student-based "reasons include boredom, goals that are unrelated to school instruction, pregnancy, and substance abuse (Bowker, 1992, in Lomawaima, 1995) .

Research by Deyhle and Swisher (1997) is critical of most dropout studies because they use "a deficit model "that places blame solely on the student. In their analysis of the literature, Deyhle and Swisher note that "failure " is a central theme:

For many Indian youth, leaving school before graduation is the ultimate expression of academic "failure ";much of the research argued that Indian youth were to blame for their failure, a position we reject. . . These Indian youth spoke of pressures and problems that lie outside of their individual control, specifically the racially restricted "place "reserved for Indians in the dominant society (p. 22) .

Deyhle and Swisher' s examination of dropout studies is one of the most comprehensive reviews in the literature on American Indian and Alaska Native education. The researchers reject the statistics that paint such a dismal picture of Natives rather than focus on why students drop out of school. Deyhle and Swisher note that many students say they do not feel like "dropouts, "instead they feel they are "pushed out "of school as the system and society fail them (Deyhle & Swisher, 1997, pp. 126 - 138).

Whatever the reasons for leaving school, dropout rates are symptomatic of the failure of an educational system that refuses to accept cultural differences as a strength rather than a weakness.

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