Relationship between first-grade marks and the high school dropout problem

Academic records were obtained for students from two towns in southwestern Ontario who attended their town's major public elementary school from first through eighth grade and then completed their secondary education in each town's only public high school between 1982 and 1986. The evidence showed that students who experienced the most difficulty in mastering the two main areas of the first-grade curriculum (reading and arithmetic) had a much higher probability of leaving high school without graduating and of experiencing serious academic problems while in high school than students who received B to A + marks in first grade.