People who deal with at-risk teens say dropping out is not an event; it's a process. Youngsters miss school and get "backed up" in class, so they miss more school because they're bewildered or embarrassed, and fall further behind. In the three years the 75-seat Hampton Performance Learning Center (PLC) has been open, it claims to have graduated 91 students. Two of the fastest-growing trends in online education converge in the Performance Learning Center project. The PLCs call themselves an alternative to traditional schools and distance themselves from the credit-recovery factories that many districts have opened to boost graduation rates ahead of state and federal sanctions. PLCs generally receive the same per-pupil funding as traditional schools. They reach out to youngsters that schools typically find most troublesome. In a report on the 2009-10 school year, the project says that, nationally, its students improved their scores in all four core subjects compared with their performance in their home school the year before--by 6 to 11 percentage points--and that 96% of the students classified as seniors at the beginning of the school year graduated.