Cities across the country seeking a coordinated strategic approach to reducing dropout rates look to Philadelphia, where a sustained, cross-sector partnership—Project U-Turn—has made significant advances in putting struggling students and out-of-school youth on the public radar and improving options for that population. Mobilizing a Cross-Sector Collaborative for Systemic Change, by JFF’s Lili Allen, draws on Philadelphia’s experience to help other cities focus attention on the dropout crisis and design strategies and leverage investments to resolve it.

Summarizing their recent report Graduating America, JFF’s Cheryl Almeida and Adria Steinberg and Robert Balfanz of the Everyone Graduates Center respond to the new federal priority on turning around the 2,000 high schools known as the nation’s “dropout factories.” As they write, “Policy and practice leaders must decide which strategies to apply, where to apply them, and how each level of government should participate.” To help guide those decisions, research from JFF and the Everyone Graduates Center points to key factors that should inform strategies for transforming or replacing such schools.

Lili Allen arrived at JFF over a decade ago, bringing 15 years of experience in building collaborations between schools and community partners on behalf of urban youth. Today, as part of JFF’s Connected by 25 team, she leads our work with cities that are building portfolios of quality pathways to college-ready graduation for struggling students and out-of-school youth. She convenes a leadership network of five communities—Boston, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and Portland, Oregon—that are frontrunners in scaling up options for youth who have fallen off track to graduation, helping them build new schools for this population and improve existing ones.

Lili Allen started working with Project U-Turn and the Philadelphia Youth Network in 2005 as part of the Strategic Assessment initiative of the Youth Transitions Funders Group. “I was impressed with the steps they were taking to make sure their collaborative got off to a strong start,” she says. “At that time, there were already lessons I could take to other cities with which we work—especially on shaping a collaborative agenda.”

Ms. Allen provides technical assistance to cross-sector partnerships in cities that are at the front end of analyzing data on off-track and out-of-school youth and creating schools that respond to their needs. She has authored or co-authored essential guides for school reformers, most recently a comprehensive toolkit for schools that wish to create, broaden, and deepen their postsecondary partnerships for maximum impact on college-going.

Calculating Cost-Return for Investments in Student Success, a joint report of JFF and the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity, and Accountability, introduces a valuable tool: The Investing in Student Success Cost-Return Calculator. This resource, designed to help campus and program administrators compare the costs of student success programs to the impact of those programs on student retention, is the featured product of a collaboration of JFF and the Delta Project. In 2007 and 2008, the 13 colleges and universities in the Investing in Student Success project, funded by the Walmart Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education, explored whether first-year programs designed to improve student retention are cost-effective investments for colleges.

“Building Community: The Future of Higher Education May Depend on the Success of Community Colleges,” in the January issue of State Legislatures magazine, provides an overview and legislative perspective on the important role of community colleges in maintaining our nation’s economic and educational competitiveness. The article strongly endorses the role of Achieving the Dream and other efforts to make community college student success an issue of national importance.

In the latest issue of Achieving Success, a policy newsletter published by JFF for Achieving the Dream, two state leaders reflect on the initiative, what their states have accomplished with its help, lessons they have learned from their participation, and how states can continue to leverage the progress they have made.

This issue of Achieving Success also introduces a new regular feature: the Developmental Education Initiative page. Launched in summer 2009, the DEI includes an ambitious, three-year effort by six Achieving the Dream states to use policy levers to dramatically improve student success in developmental education. JFF leads the state policy component of the DEI, as it does for Achieving the Dream.