The "National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988" began by surveying 25,000 eighth-graders from 1,000 schools, representing 3 million eighth-grade students in more than 38,000 public and private schools nationwide. Results indicate that a growing number of students can be identified as being "at risk" of failing to achieve in school or of dropping out. The various risk factors include living in a single-parent family, staying home alone for more than three hours a day, and having limited English proficiency. Students with two or more of these risk factors are twice as likely as those with no risk factors to be in the bottom 25 percent with respect to composite grades and test results. In addition, they are six times as likely to expect not to graduate from high school and twice as likely to have high absenteeism rates. Other major findings include: (1) nearly half of the students say they are bored at least half the time they spend in school and (2) about 40 percent report that class disruptions by other students often get in the way of their learning.