Students who live in low-income, urban communities face a heightened risk of dropping out of school. Without a diploma, job opportunities are scarce. Lower literacy, poorer health, and reduced income all create more problems.
Some districts are making a difference for these students. Across the United States, programs and policies are enabling students to catch up on credits and are providing them with tutoring, extra classes, mentoring programs, and specialized curricula to foster social and emotional skills.
The Regional Educational Laboratory of the Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) wants to get the word out about these efforts. Its EDC-based staff has researched districts marked by high dropout rates, large minority populations, and lower incomes to learn more about what they are doing to keep students enrolled. The findings will be part of an online database where educators can learn about programs and policies, and that will foster collaboration and communication across districts and states.
Researchers focused on nine mid-sized cities in the Northeast, including New Haven, Connecticut; Worcester, Massachusetts; Providence, Rhode Island; and Syracuse, New York. Ultimately, they discovered more than 120 dropout prevention programs and policies. However, they also found that few districts referred to their offerings purely as “dropout prevention.” While every district aimed to keep its students in school, their focus was instead on such goals as career and college planning, decreasing truancy, and increasing school attachment.
EDC’s Athi Myint-U conducted the research for REL-NEI. She says, “We were pleased to see that respondents across the board recognized that a broad diversity of programs constituted dropout prevention.”
Originally published on May 1, 2008