UB study rethinks the dropout-crime connection

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Dropping out of high school has been linked to higher rates of delinquency and lower socioeconomic status, but thinking of high school dropouts collectively, as one group, is a flawed belief that could be affecting interventions.

“Not all dropouts are the same,” says Ashley Barr, PhD, associate professor of sociology and criminology in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

Barr is corresponding author of a new study suggesting that dropping out of high school affects crime and later experiences when those former students reach emerging adulthood (18 through 27). But importantly, the research shows that the link between dropout and crime varies by pathway, particularly if a student is pushed or pulled out of school.

Students pushed out of school include those explicitly pushed through expulsion or suspension, along with those implicitly pushed by feeling either unwelcome or believing that school did not provide for future success. Students pulled out of school left for reasons external to school itself, like having to care for a family member or work to support their family.

“Relative to their non-dropout peers, pushouts exhibited unique patterns of criminal involvement across the transition to adulthood and were more likely than pullouts to be unemployed,” says Barr. “Criminal involvement across this period for youths pulled out of school did not vary significantly from those who never dropped out.”

Students who did not fit into either category, because of school closures, lack of transportation or moving away, looked a lot like pushouts in terms of criminal involvement and their attachment to conventional institutions such as marriage and work.

“If we were to examine dropouts as a whole, without accounting for why they exited school, such distinctions would be obscured,” says Barr.

The findings published in the journal Emerging Adulthood have important policy implications.

“School administrators might try to better support students who find the traditional school atmosphere unwelcoming and provide alternate routes to graduation,” says Barr. “We can also develop interventions that encourage attachment to conventional institutions if students are pushed out.

“But we have to think broadly and think not only in terms of school discipline and its implications, but ways in which school can be made to feel more welcoming for students who do not think that school is the right place for them.”

The study used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, a nationally representative sample consisting of about 6,700 respondents first interviewed between the ages of 12 and 17 and subsequently re-interviewed annually or biannually through age 27. Their analysis takes many factors for dropping out into account so that students most at risk are compared with others faced by similar challenges.

“It is difficult to assess how dropping out of school matters for later outcomes because those who dropped out and those who did not were likely already different before they left school,” Barr says. “The statistical approach we used allowed us to match students on risk factors for dropping out and to compare students with similar characteristics."

The current study draws on earlier work conducted by Rebecca Boylan, PhD, an analyst at the University of Texas at Austin, which considers policies and school attachment.

“It seems that school districts are paying attention to this sort of work, relaxing zero-tolerance policies, and considering the collateral consequences of harsh punishments in schools,” says Barr. “It’s a start, but there is still dramatic inequity in the extent to which schools are responding.”