"Dropping Out is No Longer an Option."

One in three high school students will not graduate from high school “on time.” Fewer than one in four low-income youth who do graduate will actually be prepared for college. Only one in five eighth graders eligible for free or reduced lunch will complete a college credential within eight years of graduating from high school—but half of their middle-income peers will achieve that valuable milestone.

We need dramatic action to spur the proliferation of learning environments that demonstrate success, particularly for students typically left behind—young people from lower-income families, minority and immigrant communities, families that have never had a college graduate, and those who attend “low-performing high schools” where a graduation rate of 50 percent or worse is the norm.

The temptation is to quickly scale up interventions that have made a difference in a few places. However, it would waste precious resources to do so without knowing what makes success possible. Moreover, no single approach will work for all low-performing high schools.

Graduating America, featured in this NEWSWIRE, provides the tools for examining the characteristics of schools, districts, and states that make certain approaches more likely to succeed in certain places. Through such analyses, states and the nation can not only identify reform opportunities but also target human, financial, and knowledge resources to where they are most needed and will do the most good.

The tools in Graduating America, coupled with the growing knowledge base of promising strategies, are essential if we are to ensure that our young people complete high school and earn postsecondary credentials. We must get beyond the myth that nothing works, that low-performing schools cannot be transformed or replaced successfully.

TURNING AROUND FAILING HIGH SCHOOLS: KEY FACTORS FOR SUCCESS

The federal government has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to stimulate significant progress in solving the nation’s graduation crisis, according to Graduating America: Meeting the Challenge of Low Graduation-Rate High Schools, a new report from Jobs for the Future and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University.

High schools with low graduation rates are concentrated in a subset of 17 states that produce approximately 70 percent of the nation’s dropouts. The report uses data from these states to develop analytic tools for examining the characteristics of schools, districts, and states that make certain approaches more likely to succeed in certain places.

“It would be a waste of precious resources to quickly scale up interventions that were successful in one place without carefully analyzing the conditions that make success possible,” said report co-author Adria Steinberg of JFF. “To transform or replace low graduation-rate high schools, states and districts need access to the growing knowledge base of what works and where it works.”

“The go-it-alone approach of leaving it to failing schools to fix themselves has not worked,” added report co-author Robert Balfanz of the Everyone Graduates Center. “With the federal government ready to invest billions of dollars into turning around low-performing schools, the time is right to form the federal-state-local and community partnerships needed to transform or replace the low graduation-rate high schools that drive the nation’s dropout crisis.”

PROFILE: CHERYL ALMEIDA

When JFF convinced Graduating America co-author Cheryl Almeida to join our staff in 2001, she had already worked alongside us for many years, and we welcomed her 20+ years of experience in research, evaluation, policy, and program development.

In her time at JFF, Cheryl has creatively combined policy and programming work through such major initiatives as the Benchmark Communities Initiative, From the Margins to the Mainstream, and Connected by 25.

These days, Cheryl directs JFF’s research on improving options and outcomes for struggling students and out-of-school youth. She keeps our attention fixed on both the policy conditions conducive to scaling up effective program designs and the practical application of a portfolio of such options. She contributed to two recent reports of major importance, one focused on the education persistence of dropouts (Making Good on a Promise: What Policymakers Can Do to Support the Educational Persistence of Dropouts) and the other on state policies that can improve outcomes for struggling students and out-of-school youth (Raising Graduation Rates in an Era of High Standards).

PARTNERING WITH STATES: JFF’S COLLEGE READINESS SERVICES

Toward JFF’s goal of doubling the number of young people who graduate from high school and who are well prepared for college, and to help states support the priorities of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we offer two sets of college-readiness services:

• Strategic school design, planning, and implementation: Services include school design evaluation and selection, assessments of policy conditions, postsecondary partnership development, fiscal planning, and implementation support.
• College readiness professional development: Services include instructional coaching, leadership training, and capacity-building support to help schools design and implement a coherent, college-ready instructional program for all students.

Throughout our 25-year history, JFF has helped state and district partners develop and implement a wide range of secondary school designs that prepare all students to succeed at the postsecondary level. These designs include early college high schools, integrated high school/college pathways, and back-on-track options that prepare over-aged and under-credited youth for college success. In this work, JFF uniquely marries innovation with proven strategies through the introduction of pioneering school designs and the expansion of the most promising practices in the field.

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Community College Excellence Awards

ACCEPTING NOMINATIONS FOR THE 2010 METLIFE FOUNDATION AWARDS

Nominations are being accepted for the 2010 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Awards. Colleges are invited to fill out the simple self-nomination form on the JFF Web site. The deadline is Friday, October 2. Next, selected institutions will be invited to provide additional information.

MetLife Foundation will give three awards, one in each of three categories: Exceptional Service to Students; Service to Communities; and Service Through Innovation. Each winning college will receive a $40,000 grant.

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JFF in the News

HOW TO HELP STRUGGLING STUDENTS IN HIGH SCHOOL? SEND THEM TO COLLEGE

In July, the Chronicle of Higher Education took an in-depth look at the Early College High School Initiative, launched in 2002 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and coordinated by JFF. The report notes the successes of the initiative, including the launching of 201 schools that bridge the gap between secondary and postsecondary institutions. It also looks at the challenges ahead, including the need for sustainable financing in an era when “California’s 110 community colleges, for example, have said they may have to turn away as many as 250,000 students this fall.”

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Brains, Looks, and Personality

WELCOME TO THE NEW JFF WEB SITE

We invite you to visit the new JFF Web site, offering easy access to the strategies and experience that guide our work. Read about the challenges facing American society that underlie the personal commitment of our 90+ staff to the task before us. Download reports documenting the lessons and tools derived from JFF’s on-the-ground practice and informed policy advocacy. And learn about the people of JFF: who we are and why we do what we do.

Special features include: An interactive map of our projects and partnerships in more than 40 states and over 200 communities. Features on our partners and funders. JFF in the News. Online videos on our commitment. And up-to-the-minute access to JFF through RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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Through research, action, and advocacy, Jobs for the Future develops promising education and labor market models, expands successful models in communities across the country, and shapes the policy environment that enables American families and companies to compete in a global economy.

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