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The impact of high school size on dropout rate was investigated using the school data of the High School and Beyond Study of the National Center of Educational Statistics. Information from 744 public, comprehensive high schools was employed to test a model depicting a direct influence of school size on the diversity of academic offerings and on the school social climate, as well as an indirect effect on dropout rate. The findings indicated that potential links between school size and dropout rate were almost totally attributable to the social climate, particularly those elements dealing with student participation and the severity of the problem environment. These results imply that one outcome of school consolidations which seemingly has been given little attention is that it may increase early school leaving.
Pittman et al. (Tue,) studied this question.