The purpose of this study was to construct and validate a self-rating scale which can be easily administered and quickly scored for discriminating between those high school students who will dropout and those who will not. A 34-item scale was constructed for subjects with a fifth grade reading level. This scale was administered to 113 high school seniors and 113 dropouts matched on age and IQ. The Chi-square test and correlational analysis were conducted to examine the item characteristics. The results indicated that eighteen of the original thirty-four items with significant discrimination and predictive power (p<.05) could be retained in a revised scale. The items in the revised scale appear to fall into three main classes: (1) a failure syndrome, (2) involvement in extracurricular activities, and (3) home background. Extensive reliability and validity studies on the revised scale are planned. A copy of the original 34-item scale is included. (Author/CK)