This study was designed to document, four years later, the progress of 52 LD adolescents who entered a special education program in the ninth grade. The sample were “typical” LD adolescents: old for their grade placement, with severe reading retardation and moderate math retardation. Theoretically, these students should have been in 12th grade at the time of follow—up. In fact, 16 were still enrolled in a special education high school program; seven were still in high school but in regular classes full—time; twenty—four had stopped attending high school; and five could not be located. Thirty—four students (all those still in school and 11 of the dropouts) were retested on academic skills. Results indicated impressive gains for all students although approximately half the achievement growth had taken place in the first year of the LD program. The 11 dropouts were also interviewed about the circumstances of their school leaving. A majority reported that they had been encouraged to leave school before graduation because of persistent, academic, behavior and attendance problems. Data available to the school district at the time of placement into the ninth—grade special education program were utilized in a step—wise discriminant analysis, for predicting status at follow—up. The discriminant analysis was quite poor at identifying students who would leave school.

Four studies were undertaken in 12 urban high schools to explore the accommodative power of mainstream secondary schools and the extent to which teacher attitudes and student behaviors contributed to failure of learning disabled students in regular high school classes. Findings suggest that mainstream teachers recognize the low achievement of LD students but do very little that is different instructionaily when these students are assigned to regular-content classes. The one adjustment that is commonly made is to lower grading standards so that LD students have a good chance of passing the course. In fact, most LD students received passing grades in most of their mainstream courses and most failing grades were in courses in which attendance records were extremely poor.