Students who are chronically absent are more likely than other students to drop out of school. Many schools have goals to reduce student truancy and to help chronically absent students attend school regularly. Few studies, however, have focused on whether or how family and community involvement help reduce rates of chronic absenteeism. In this longitudinal […]

Read more...

What are the daily actions adults in schools must take to ensure students attend regularly, are engaged in schoolwork, and learn to high standards?  This three-year project funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences is developing and piloting an attendance outreach and incentive program, an academic counseling and support program, and […]

Read more...

MDRC, a nonpartisan, nonprofit education and social policy research organization, conducted an independent, third-party evaluation of Talent Development. This rigorous evaluation focuses on the first five high schools to begin using the model in the School District of Philadelphia. The evaluation follows 20 cohorts of ninth-grade students for up to four years of high school […]

Read more...

After only one year, the 9th Grade Success Academy at Bridgeton (N.J.) High School was showing promising results: Attendance was up, the number of dropouts was down and more students were passing core courses. Bridgeton’s success academy received national recognition in 2007 as one of five programs featured in “Rethinking High School, preparing students for […]

Read more...

In addition to improving student achievement, many elementary, middle, and high schools are working to increase students’ career awareness, ensure completion of requirements for grade promotion and high school graduation, and improve planning for postsecondary education and training. This set of 15 activities comes from schools in the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS) at […]

Read more...

Early warning systems use readily available data to alert teachers and administrators to students who are on the pathway to dropping out.  A key benefit of early warning systems is that they help educators to know what to look for amid the mountains of data about students.  Early warning systems can be implemented at the […]

Read more...

Gradual Disengagement: A Portrait of the 2008-09 Dropouts in the Baltimore City Schools examined eight years of student-level data to paint a collective portrait of the process of disengagement that leads to student dropout. The study found that the majority of students who eventually drop out of Baltimore high schools enter ninth grade with a […]

Read more...

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 […]

Read more...

American Educational Research Association  |  April 2009 Common Characteristics of Effective Dropout Prevention Programs personalizing the experience of high school to increase student engagement through mentoring or counseling programs focusing on increasing student attendance and achievement (tutoring or other academic support) helping students to see a connection between high school work and life after high […]

Read more...

Boston Globe | September 9, 2008 MILLIONS OF American students are back in high school, and before the year is done more than 1.1 million will drop out. In many of the nation’s cities and low-wealth rural districts, 40 to 60 percent of entering freshman will not graduate. The suburbs are no longer immune. Retired […]

Read more...