Teachers can have a significant impact on how well their students achieve.
How they treat their various students may make the difference between decisions to remain in school or to drop out. It is apparent from research that at-risk students are frequently treated differently from their higher achieving peers. Indeed, some policies, ostensibly designed to maintain high standards in school, have had unintended consequences that have exacerbated the dropout problem. This factor has been a known dropout correlate for quite some time. Schreiber reported in 1963 that out of every ten dropouts, nine had been retained at least one year.