The merits of a public campaign can rarely be gauged fully in its early months or even in its initial year. Rather, the true measures of a campaign's successes are revealed over time: in its ongoing impacts on opinion or policy, and on the tangible results it achieves. On both accounts, Philadelphia's Project U-Turn campaign continues to make…

By now people are all too familiar with the disheartening numbers: approximately 7,000 students drop out each day, which means nearly one-third of high school students will not graduate with their peers. The statistics are even more staggering for minority and low-income students, especially in the nation's largest urban districts, where less than…

High school dropouts face daunting odds of success in a labor market that increasingly rewards education and skills. This report presents very early results from a rigorous, independent evaluation of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program, an intensive residential program that aims to "reclaim the lives" of young people ages 16 to 18…

Due to the increasing number of children and youth dropping out of school, the Malawi government came up with a strategy to address their learning needs through non-formal means in its Education for All (EFA) plan. This resulted in the introduction of a three-year cycle pilot programme known as Complementary Basic Education (CBE). Funded by GTZ, a…

Hungary's "Belvarosi Tanoda" Secondary School offers an informal, flexible environment and alternative teaching methods for students who have had problems in other schools. The "Belvarosi Tanoda" (which translates as downtown school) is a second chance school for students who have dropped out of upper secondary education. It…

High school students with disabilities who drop out are costly to society. Compared to those who graduate, they are more likely to be unemployed, dependent on public services, and involved in the criminal justice system. Consequently, helping students with disabilities graduate has become a prominent national concern. Students with disabilities…

Describes research evaluating the success of the Pontiac I.I.P. in changing student behavior and in improving academic achievement of potential drop-outs. (AN)

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…

High school students with disabilities who drop out are costly to society. Compared to those who graduate, they are more likely to be unemployed, dependent on public services, and involved in the criminal justice system. Consequently, helping students with disabilities graduate has become a prominent national concern. Students with disabilities…

Condensed from "Carnegie Quarterly, Published by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Volume 16 (Fall 1968), 1-5

Many states and districts across the country struggle with designing and implementing coherent dropout prevention initiatives that promote academic advancement, especially for special needs students, who drop out at much higher rates than the general student population. This "snapshot" describes New Hampshire's innovative use of data…

The manual--one-third of which consists of appendixes--describes strategies which are used to involve parents and parent surrogates in the St. Paul Public Schools' Model Program for Handicapped Out-of-School Youth (OSY). OSY offers three primary components that facilitate positive involvement of parents in planning: the team approach,…

A project was undertaken by the Public Services Division, Northern Michigan University, under a contract with the Department of Labor, for the purpose of training a population of 100 rural dropouts ages 17 through 25 in salable work skills. Three counties in the Upper Michigan Peninsula were selected as the area from which trainees were selected.…

This issue of CURRENTS reviews some of the general findings on the dropout, and outlines approaches that have proven effective at various types of institutions in reducing dropout rates. Most of the programs examined here are aimed at early identification of the potential dropout and prevention of his withdrawal through the provision of special…