In France, several terms are used to define leaving school. The first defines leaving school as students who gradually dropout of the school system. The second is a broader term covering many hypotheses for youths under age 16 finding themselves outside of the school system and include exclusion with no continuation in another establishment, gradual dropping out in the form of frequent, increasing truancy, and accidents in the youth’s personal history, in essence “dropping out.” Today, in France, dropping out is viewed as a major social problem and formulated in the terms of the debate on security and fear of crime. In the 1980s, the theme of academic failure was replaced by dropping out which is at the intersection of three assumptions: growing fear of crime and insecurity, increasing and increasingly young juvenile delinquency, and the extension of violence of all sorts. This article examines the prevalence of dropping out, as well as truancy acknowledging the lack of reliable figures for permanent school leaving. It discusses the common features of the dropping out situation which are typically characterized by the multiplicity of actors involved. The dropping out process brings to light practices stemming from developments in the school system itself, conditioning the actors and leaving them with little latitude to react differently, other than deviant. The question then remains, educate or exclude. Often dropouts become labeled as disorderly and uneducable for short periods of time to several years before they actually leave school. These judgments become “self-fulfilling prophecies.” Therefore, measures proposed to change the student’s behavior are unsuccessful. Approaches in the prevention of dropping out are briefly presented and discussed.