Engaging Students in School and Learning: The Real Deal for School Completion

The most recent Office of Special Education report (2006) showed a persistent school completion gap between general education students and peers identified as having "high-incidence conditions," including a specific learning disability, behavior or emotional disability, other health impairment under Section 504, or milder levels of intellectual deficiency. This article combines a conceptual model that helps the reader to better understand the process of school dropout with five specific and practical strategies that can be deployed to improve school completion rates in local schools.