caring and responsive adults for support and guidance. While practically all young adolescents may be considered at risk, some middle level learners seem partic ularly in danger of an unproductive life. These young adolescents are especially vulnerable to choosing a path leading to a diminished future. Dryfoos (1990) found that many of the 10to 17-year old population could be classified as moderate to high risk because of involvement in a range of problems including drug abuse, early sexual activity, low educational achievement, and delinquent behavior. Low performing students assess the value of the school experience in their lives and may begin to emo tionally separate themselves from the school system. They have often abandoned school mentally while antic ipating legally dropping out. And, despite their needs, the students at risk for dropping out of school are likely to be neglected in the classroom (Barr & Parrett, 1995). Studies indicate that teachers seat low achieving students farther from the teacher, they wait less time for low achievers to answer, they criticize low achievers more fre quently and praise them less often, they demand less work from low achievers, and they provide less detail to them (Good & Brophy, 1987). Programs which reach these middle level learners have potential for changing this pattern of Mure for the learners and for helping adults understand these young adolescents. Factors which lead to dropping out of school are established by early adolescence. A profile of dropouts shows that they have lower grades and test scores, are more likely to have been retained, are more likely to be discipline problems in school, are more likely to have been suspended or expelled, and are more likely to be placed in a lower ability track (Allen, Splittgerber, & Manning, 1993). Dropout students experience greater feelings of failure at school, less counseling about career goals, lower levels of parent and teacher expectations, and lower participation in extracurricular and comple mentary learning experiences. Even those teachers who are attuned to the social and academic characteristics of potential dropouts are often unable to provide the indi vidual tutoring and attention needed to intervene in the academic lives of the at-risk students.