Change Management Plan

1. Prediction: Identifying who are the possible dropouts

2. Intervention: Aiding the at-risk students

3. Prevention: Altering the factors that schools control

4. Recovery: When prevention and intervention are not enough

5. Considerations for implementation

Prediction:

· Demographic background: Students who maybe poor, who maybe members of certain minority groups, who are male, who knows little English, who have learning or emotional disabilities, who move more often, and who are overage for their grade are more likely to drop out.

· Family factors: Students who come from single parent families, have a parent who dropped out of high school, have parents who provide less oversight and support for learning, and who have older siblings who did not complete school are more likely to drop out.

· Adult responsibilities: Teenagers who take on adult roles such as becoming a parent, getting married or holding down a job are more likely to drop out.

· Educational experiences: Dropouts are more likely to have struggled academically: Low grades, low test scores, falling behind in course credits and being retained are associated with lower chances for graduation. Dropouts also are more likely to have shown signs of disengagement from school: High rates of absenteeism or truancy, poor classroom behavior, less participation in extracurricular activities, and bad relationships with teachers and peers all have been linked to lower chances for graduation.

Intervention:

ALAS was implemented from 1990 to 1995 in a Los Angeles County junior high school serving a predominantly low-income Latino population. The program employed counselors who provided a set of comprehensive and coordinated supports to students and parents (Larson and Rumberger 1995, Gándara et al. 1998).

Student attendance was monitored on a period-by-period basis every day, and parents were contacted daily about truancy or cut classes. ALAS counselors communicated a personal interest that students attend regularly, taking initiative to help families overcome obstacles that stood in the way, and expecting students to make up missed time. They also helped teachers establish a system of regular feedback to parents and students about behavior, class work, and homework on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis as needed.

Prevention:

Students often have difficulty making a successful transition to high school, and many eventual dropouts experience sharp declines in grades and engagement after they enter ninth grade. High schools tend to be larger, more official institutions that are more academically and socially demanding than students are used to. Research has found that restructuring ninth grade to create a more supportive experience can help curb dropout rates. The School Transitional Environmental Program (STEP) assigns at-risk students to homerooms in which all their classmates are program participants. Students from the same homeroom take all of their core academic courses together in one part of the school. Homeroom teachers take on the role of guidance counselors, administrators, and instructors, helping students handle the educational and personal challenges of ninth grade. The program will be evaluated using several quasi-experimental studies that track STEP participants and a randomly selected comparison group over time.

Recovery:

The first step in considering whether and how to implement recovery programs is to analyze data to determine the size and characteristics of the young adult population who could benefit. In general, students who need recovery help will fall into two sub-groups with different needs. Dropouts who did not fall severely behind in credits before leaving high school:   For example, about 15% of the 26%, 301 teenagers who dropped out of Chicago Public Schools over the course of the 2001, 2002, and 2003 school years, left after making it to eleventh grade having earned the majority credits necessary for a diploma. Those older teenagers would need flexible full-time or part-time alternatives to traditional, comprehensive high schools.

Considerations for implementation

While the dropout problem is daunting, research conducted over the past decade should dispel the notion that schools are powerless to do anything about dropping out and encourage optimism that districts can help many more young people stay in school. We now know it is possible to identify most dropouts by ninth grade and many well before that.

Reference

Larson and Rumberger 1995, Gándara et al. (1998). ALAS: Achievement for Latinos through Academic Success