This paper explores the tension between prevailing ideologies of the high school dropout as “loser” and data which indicate that many dropouts are highly motivated, intelligent, and critical of educational institutions and labor market opportunities. Attention is paid to who drops out, with a particular focus on gender, race/ethnicity, and class, and to how these dropouts are portrayed in social-science, popular, and teacher-training literature. It is concluded that explanations offered for the “tragedy of the dropouts” which isolate individual or family factors function to delegitimate dropouts' critique of schools and the labor market, bolster the image of education as the great equalizer, and deflect attention away from race, class, and gender biases which operate in schools and at work.
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