Traditional educational thinking says that if you belong to certain socioeconomic groups, you are more likely to drop out of school, but the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington-based education group, says that academic indicators are a better way of judging that.

In some ways the idea might seem a "duh," but a paper by senior policy associate Lyndsay Pinkus shows that earlier intervention can reduce the risks for students dropping out. Researchers around the nation have found, the report says, that a failing grade in math or English, poor attendance or being retained a grade are red signals that a student is at risk of dropping out.

The alliance's brief on the subject can be found here.