Over the last three decades, public education in the US has become the focus of increasing criticism and controversy. This is not surprising given that our nation’s high school graduation rates have scarcely moved in the last 40 years, and the startling statistic that one student drops out of high school every 9 seconds. Some argue that there is a school dropout epidemic in the US, which poses a serious public health concern given robust links between an individual’s education and health outcomes. There are also enormous societal (financial) and individual (psychosocial) costs to dropping out. Societal costs are estimated in the billions of dollars in lost tax revenues, public spending on public assistance, health care, and crime prevention and prosecution. Individual costs are reflected in higher unemployment, poverty, incarceration, and poorer health among dropouts. In addition, over a 45 year career, a dropout will earn $700,000 less than a graduate which contributes substantially to the problem of income inequality, a growing concern of researchers and policy makers.
A substantial body of research suggests that the decision to drop out of school is not made suddenly nor stems from recent and potentially temporary factors. Rather, the decision to drop out is part of a long process of disengagement from school with initial risk indicators evident in elementary school and even prior to school entry. Few studies, however, have examined risk indicators that occur prior to school entry and during early schooling that may predict disengagement in the elementary school years. This early disengagement may represent the genesis of the process of disengagement from school and ultimately school dropout. At present, there is little empirical research on its nature and course, even though disengagement from elementary school is highly correlated with disengagement in middle school and high school, which is predictive of school dropout.
In the present study, we focus on early childhood malleable factors in the home, within the child, and within the school setting that can set children on an early trajectory of school disengagement and academic problems. We adopt a multi-level perspective by examining the roles of children’s early home environments and early self-regulation behavior in predicting student engagement and reading achievement in 3rd grade. Specifically, we examine the role of household chaos experienced from birth to age 5 and child self-regulation ability at Kindergarten (K). We also examine whether high classroom quality across the early elementary school years (K through 3rd grade) can help to mitigate the detrimental effects of early chaotic home environments and self-regulation difficulties on later student engagement and reading achievement.
