Students who drop out of school don't do so impulsively but instead may fall into a dropout trajectory as early as kindergarten, according to an Arizona State University study to appear in the Journal of Education Research. "Educators may be overlooking important developmental trajectories exhibited by students prior to entering high school," said Gregory Hickman, who directed the undergraduate research. "Dropouts miss an average of 124 days by eighth grade."

A sampling of the study’s findings: “Couple such academic deficits from the beginning of school, along with being academically retained in middle childhood and significantly missing more days of seat time and instructional guidance throughout their developmental progression, and dropouts are clearly on a differential developmental trajectory from the beginning of their academic career than those students who graduate. Further, the gap between the developmental trajectories of graduates and dropouts becomes more divergent across their developmental progression from early childhood to adolescence.”