Solving the Drop Out Crisis
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Timely from the Top: An occasional column by Alice RayThe latest government report paints a frightening picture of the sheer numbers of students who are dropping out. In 17 of the 50 largest cities, the majority of students who start high school fail to graduate. And that understates the problem, because it disregards those who drop out before 9th grade. The biggest difference between urban schools where students graduate and those where students don’t is the sense of active membership in a community of shared purpose. The Carnegie Foundation published research that identified five things statistically most correlated with dropping out: low GPA, high discipline referrals, disruptive/poor classroom behavior, truancy, and, again, lack of connectedness to the school community. The Gates Foundation asked “How do students explain the causes?” They heard: lack of connection (again), boredom, lack of motivation (expectations too low, not too high), academic problems, and problems outside school. The Drop Out Prevention Network went further still to examine the “why behind the why.” They identified a whole range of risk factors that exist within students, in their families, between them and their peers, in their schools, in their neighborhoods, and in social structures of inequality. As these risk factors are piled on, the chance of dropping out increases. No wonder DOPN also identified resilience as the personal characteristic that could most predict school success among students at risk. The data and conclusions drawn from it can be overwhelming. There is not one symptom that precedes dropping out, there are at least five that can be precursors. There is not one cause for each symptom, there are many, and they operate in multiple domains. And there is not one best measure for dealing with either symptoms or cause, there are a whole body of proven effective strategies. Each has been proven to work with some students, in some settings. Many are expensive or difficult to implement. Seven randomized, controlled trials have shown that student use of Ripple Effects software has positively impacted all five of the school markers that Carnegie Foundation says predict dropping out. It also has been shown to significantly increase two important aspects of resilience: problem solving and empathy. And exposing one group of students to Ripple Effects training in empathy and social skills has resulted in the other group feeling more connected – a constant theme through all these studies. The program both promotes core social-emotional abilities and addresses more than 150 individual risk factors. Is it a solution to the drop out problem? Of course not. Can it be an effective part of a set of strategies to address the issue on many levels in many settings? The evidence suggests that it can be.
More Timely from the Top: 03/12/08 Compliments gone haywire |
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