Dropping out of school is associated with a wide array of negative outcomes and the extraordinarily high United States dropout rate has brought the issue to the forefront of American education.

This study investigated normally collected middle school data from a suburban Colorado school district to determine the predictive value toward students dropping out or graduating from high school. Accessed was a longitudinal data set of first year in middle school records, 7^th grade, from 1999-2003 for students that graduated or dropped out from a Colorado suburban high school from 2003-2007. Discriminate function analysis was utilized on 2,195 student school records, that included 106 dropout and 2,089 graduate student academic and demographic data, to determine the strength of the data to predict group membership.

Middle school student’s metamorphosis from child to adolescent is a uniquely critical time in a student’s growth due to physical, social, psychological, and brain synaptic pruning. Dropping out of school is influenced by a wide array of external and internal school concerns but if clear set of red flags were available for easy identification of at risk students concerned school personal may best bring interventions to bear in the middle school setting. This study found that for this data set there was a slight correlation between grades in Language Arts and Math with a greater predictive power from Social Studies, Science, and Physical Education, subjects often overlooked in other studies. The conclusion stated that a clear set of warning signals was found with a strong enough probability of dropout identification to be considered as warning indicators and therefore all indicators need to be considered for every child on an individual level.