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Robert Balfanz  // Browsing posts in Robert Balfanz

Three Steps to Building an Early Warning and Intervention System for Potential Dropouts

Three Steps to Building an Early Warning and Intervention System for Potential Dropouts

Most dropouts are identifiable years before they dropout, struggle in or disengage from school for three to four or more years before they dropout, are preventable, and ultimately want to graduate from high school. This PowerPoint offers three steps toward reducing dropouts in your community. Step 1: Understand the dropout problem in your community. Step […]

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What Do Small Learning Communities Cost?

What Do Small Learning Communities Cost?

Little is known about what it actually costs to operate a high school organized into Small Learning Communities (SLCs). As a result, many of the cost estimates and subsequent funding decisions made when high schools are converted into SLCs are often based on little more than guesswork. Estimates are often determined as much by the […]

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The Graduation Gap: Using Promoting Power to Examine the Number and Characteristics of High Schools with High and Low Graduation Rates in the Nation and Each State

The Graduation Gap: Using Promoting Power to Examine the Number and Characteristics of High Schools with High and Low Graduation Rates in the Nation and Each State

CSOS Policy Brief | January 2005 President Bush’s High School Initiative and the National Govenors Association’s Redesigning the American High School initiative are focusing national and state leaders on the urgent need to improve America’s high schools. For high school reform efforts to succeed on a broad scale it is necessary to accurately identify the […]

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2011 Building a Grad Nation Report

2011 Building a Grad Nation Report

We are now able to report that from 2008 to 2009 (the most current data available), the number of dropout factory high schools decreased by an additional 112 schools to 1,634, representing an annual rate of progress approximately three times as fast as the previous period. By 2009, approximately 580,000 fewer students attended a dropout […]

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Advancing the “Colorado Graduates” Agenda

Advancing the “Colorado Graduates” Agenda

“About 30 percent of Colorado high school students don’t graduate. Less than half of the black, Latino and American Indian students who start high school in Colorado actually finish. Our goal: cut the drop-out rate in half within 10 years.” Governor Bill Ritter, Jr. The ambitious goal set by Colorado’s governor to address the state’s […]

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2010 Building a Grad Nation Report: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic

2010 Building a Grad Nation Report: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic

The central message of this report is that some states and school districts are raising their high school graduation rates with scalable solutions in our public schools, showing the nation we can end the high school dropout crisis. America made progress not only in suburbs and towns, but also in urban districts and in states […]

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Putting All Students on the Graduation Path: New Directions for Youth Development, No. 127

Putting All Students on the Graduation Path: New Directions for Youth Development, No. 127

At no other time in our nation’s history has graduating from high school been a more important prerequisite for adult success. Young people who fall off the graduation path are more prone than ever before to experience chronic unemployment, poverty, ill health, dependence on social welfare, and a lifetime of struggle. The enormous costs to […]

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Meeting the Nation’s High School Graduation Challenge

Meeting the Nation’s High School Graduation Challenge

U.S. Army National Education Conference  |  September 2009 President Obama has challenged the nation to eliminate dropping out as an option. How then does the dropout crisis end? We know where the problem is concentrated. We have insight into why these high schools have low graduation rates. We know why most students drop out of […]

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Graduating America: Meeting the Challenge of Low Graduation-Rate High Schools

Graduating America: Meeting the Challenge of Low Graduation-Rate High Schools

This report is  a collaboration between the Everyone Graduates Center and Jobs for the Future. While high schools with low graduation rates have developed in every state and many communities across the country, they are concentrated in a subset of 17 states that produce approximately 70 percent of the nation’s dropouts. These states, which are […]

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Putting Middle Grades Students on the Graduation Path: A Policy and Practice Brief

Putting Middle Grades Students on the Graduation Path: A Policy and Practice Brief

The middle grades will play a pivotal role in enabling the nation to reach President Obama’s goal of graduating all students from high school prepared for college or advanced career training. In high-poverty neighborhoods, in particular, our research and school improvement work indicate that students’ middle grades experiences have tremendous impact on the extent to […]

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