The National Center for School Engagement is proud to launch our new on-line course entitled:

Truancy and Dropout: Mending the Cracks
in the Graduation Pipeline

This course was developed in response to the many requests we receive for information on best practices in improving attendance and promoting school engagement.  The course covers:

  ·  Why school attendance matters so much  
  ·  AAA Schools: the NCSE approach 
  ·  Causes of truancy 
  ·  Patterns of absence 
  ·  Helpful approaches 
  ·  Tips for effective case management 
  ·  Compulsory school attendance law 
  ·  Evaluation

Print this flyer for more information, or follow this link to register. 

(Thanks to start-up support from the NJ Office of the Attorney General, the course is free to New Jersey residents and employees.)

Five Myths About School Attendance
Hedy Chang writes in Education Week about how useful school attendance data can be - if schools know what to look for, and take time to analyze the data.  Click HERE to go to the article.

Transforming the High School Experience
A rigorous study by MDRC finds that the New York City "Small School of Choice" initiative increased the four-year high school graduation rate of participating students by 6.8% on average.  The small high schools included in the study serve a primarily disadvantaged group of students and does so on a large scale.  Signifiant resources, both public and private, were invested in in this initiative, but if improvement can be made in the largest school district in the country, it can be made anywhere.  To view the complete report in PDF format click HERE.

Student Characteristics and Achievement in 22 Kipp Middle Schools
A new study of 22 KIPP middle schools finds that students make stunning gains in both reading and math by the end of 8th grade,  Researchers at Mathematica Policy Institute show that the Knowledge is Power Program schools enrolled students who were mostly below average compared to those in the school districts of origin.  Four years later, those same students earned state test scores that were substantially higher than the average scores from those same districts.  For almost all the KIPP schools the differences were statistically significant and educationally sibstantial.  To read the complete report in PDF format click HERE.   

Student Engagement in School Shown to Mitigate Student Victimization
Bullying and victimization of students in schools have received a great deal of deserved attention.  NCSE undertook this study to investigate the nature of the relationship between bullying and truancy and delinquency.  The study found that the power of victimization to distance students from learning can be overcome by schools adopting intentional student engagment strategies to create positive learning environments that, in turn, produce academic achievement.  A brief treatment of the study's conclusions and recommendations can be found in the Executive Summary.

The full report provides great detail on how these recommendations and conclusions were reached.  The literature review is timely and extensive to help program designers and researchers alike.  The quantitative study using Structural Equation Modeling provides evidence among the key factors that point to the power of engagement for victims of bullying, and the lack of causative relationships between bullying and truancy.  The qualitative studies look at different perspectives on the problem to help explain some of the "whys" behind the quatitaive data and the findings reported in the literature.

Report on Johns Hopkins Research Released
The Colorado Graduates Initiative (CGI), a partnership between the National Center for School Engagement, Colorado Youth For A Change and the Colorado Children’s Campaign, has released a new study examining high school dropout rates in five Colorado school districts. The study, “Advancing the Colorado Graduates Agenda: Understanding the Dropout Problem and Mobilizing to Meet the Graduation Challenge,” was conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and underscores the importance of preventing course failures, particularly in middle school and ninth grade.

The five participating districts were asked to take part in the study because they are among the largest districts in Colorado and collectively have the highest raw numbers of dropouts. In particular the study finds that 25 percent of schools (108 in Colorado ) account for 70 percent of all dropouts statewide.

The report highlights the importance of using behavioral, rather than demographic, information to identify and intervene with students who are at risk of dropping out. It was modeled after research done in other major cities, which has found that early warning signals such as absenteeism, poor behavior and poor course grades can identify potential dropouts early and guide effective response at the school district and school building level.

The report underscores the critical nature of passing core courses in the ninth grade and reveals the daunting challenges that students face when they fail early in their high school careers. Critical findings among the 2006-07 dropouts in the five districts include:

 ·         More than three in four had failed one or more semester courses in ninth grade (compared to between one-fifth and one-third of graduates with the same indicator)

 ·         A large majority (in four of the five districts) displayed patterns of chronic absenteeism

 ·         Nearly half (in four of the five districts) had been suspended at least once during the previous four years (compared to about half as many among graduates)

 These data make a compelling case for targeted district and school-building level response to student patterns of behavior that can be seen as early as 6^th grade.  Implementing an early warning system (EWS), developing a coordinated and comprehensive support system for students identified by the EWS, establishing a dropout recovery and retrieval program and assessing school building policies and practices are critical steps NCSE urges school districts to undertake. 

Go to the full report here.

Additional John Hopkins Compendium Reports:

School Dropouts in Rural Colorado School Districts
A study of rural school dropout rates in Colorado.

A Report on Gender and the Dropout Problem in Colorado Schools
A report on research concerning the differences in school dropout rates based on gender in Colorado schools.

The Children We Left Behind are Dropping Out of School:
Making the Case for Using Title I Federal Stimulus Funds for Dropout Prevention and Recovery
By Dr. Ken Seeley

A recent study by University of Chicago Nobel economist James J. Heckman emphasizes the need to sustain early investments in at-risk children through their teenage years.  He reported that with additional “skill building” strategies such as mentoring, adolescent literacy, and meaningful service learning; boys from high risk families were much less likely to become delinquent than boys who did not receive these interventions.  He found that when the investments “were sustained into the teen age years,” 90 percent of the boys finished high school and 40 percent went on to attend college. (Heckman and Cunha, 2007)  In a subsequent publication, Heckman went on to say, “to put these numbers in perspective, sustained skill-building investments would go a long way toward shrinking and in some cases eliminating, the nation’s worrisome racial disparities in academic achievement, drug use and college attendance.”  (Heckman, 2007).

Heckman’s findings help explain a common criticism of early intervention with young children that the gains tend to fade over time.  His work speaks to the efficacy of continuing to invest in at risk children well into their teen age years to ensure better outcomes.  This helps to make the case for providing supplemental education services for at risk youth many of whom qualify for Title I services. Many of these services could prevent students from dropping out of school.