Kids who quit school don't just suddenly drop out; it's more of a slow fade. Typically it begins in the ninth grade, if not earlier, often when life hits a particularly nasty patch and racking up credits in class no longer seems especially compelling or plausible. Ernestine Maisonet started fad- ing in eighth grade, when the grandmother who had raised her died. "She was a woman who worked wonders," murmurs Maisonet, who says she doesn't know her mother and isn't close to her dad. After the death, her family of six siblings fell apart. Maisonet has lived sometimes with an aunt, sometimes with a boyfriend, and sometimes she had no place to go. "I was a good student until my grandmother passed away," says the 19-year-old redhead from the Bronx. Though she was enrolled in high school, she earned just three credits in two years: "I completely shut down. I didn't do good at all."
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