Blog RSS Updates
Twitter
Facebook
|
|||||||||||
<< Back to Ask the Expert Home
Ask the Expert Your Question!
Question 5: What is the role of communities and businesses in keeping students enrolled in school? Are there specific partnerships in which you have seen effective use of local businesses and communities in maintaining student interest in High School? |
GREAT question to close out the month in part because it gives me an opportunity to highlight a hot-off-the-press resource—Grad Nation: A Guidebook to Help Communities Tackle the Dropout Crisis. Commissioned by the America’s Promise Alliance to support the dropout summits APA is coordinating in communities across the country, the guidebook is chock full of wisdom and resources. In it you will find a sensible framework for action, planning tools, and information about specific programs and partnerships. Let me also call out a 2006 publication of the American Youth Policy Forum, Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities are Reconnecting Out of School Youth.
It is common sense, and increasingly common knowledge, that young people are more engaged and do better in school and life when they are actively supported by adults in and outside of school. Community members, businesses, higher education, social service agencies, and other organizations play vital roles in keeping students engaged and enrolled in school. These include direct service to students via tutoring, mentoring, service and work-based learning opportunities, attendance outreach, wrap-around social services and case management, electives and extra-curricular activities. They also include support for schools and educators, e.g. professional development, collaborative curriculum development, technology integration, support for multiple and alternative graduation pathways, and comprehensive reform technical assistance.
These roles are easy to list, but challenging to implement well. I have visited numerous high schools that present a long list of “partners” only to find that very few are active. Typically there is little coherence or coordination among various initiatives, and too little understanding of their impact on student outcomes. Schools, school systems, and partnering organizations are well served by planning partnerships carefully with attention to how they support the goals of an overall strategic plan. Strong partnership guidelines articulate communications and evaluation processes and specific mechanisms by which the supports or services will be sustained or institutionalized over a defined time period.
It also helps to have schools organized in ways that provide a focused and relevant context to support viable school-business partnerships. During the 1990s, the School-to-Work movement emphasized the importance of school-based, work-based, and connecting activities to align learning experiences for students in and out of school. Career Academies, or career-themed small learning communities or schools-within-a-school, provide structured and sustainable points of connection between schools and local businesses. Local hotels and restaurants will partner in more meaningful ways with a Business Academy that has a travel and tourism pathway than they will with an English or social studies department, for example. For more information on Career Academies, see organizations listed below.
In a Baltimore innovation high school organized around a ninth grade academy and two career academies, local community and business partners actually come in for the last class period of the day to teach a course and work with students. For the ninth graders, this is an “arts and expression” period where community-based professional artists (visual artists, photographers, dancers, writers, even acrobats) guide students in exploring their own interests and talents. For upper grade students, local professionals teach career electives. This arrangement has two major benefits. Most obvious, it provides students exposure to new experiences and connection with productive, supportive adults. Just as important, it provides teachers and administrators in the school regular common planning time which they use to continuously improve their program and troubleshoot and respond to students’ social and academic needs. Students in this school, the majority of whom are low income and live in isolated neighborhoods, are posting 90% attendance rates, 90% grade promotion rates, and 84% adjusted cohort graduation rate, and are outperforming district high schools on the state high school assessments 2:1. The results are a strong testament to the power of partnerships.
References
Balfanz, R., Bridgeland, J., Fox, J.H., McNaught, M. (February, 2009). Grad Nation: A Guidebook to Help Communities Tackle the Dropout Crisis. Washington, DC: America’s Promise Alliance. http://www.americaspromise.org/APAPage.aspx?id=11796
Martin, N. and Halperin, S. (2006). Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities are Reconnecting Out of School Youth. Washington, DC: American Youth Policy Forum. http://www.aypf.org/publications/WhateverItTakes.htm
For more on career academies:
MDRC: www.mdrc.org
The National Academy Foundation: www.naf.org
The National Career Academy Coalition: www.ncacinc.com
The Career Academy Support Network: casn.berkeley.edu
For more on the Baltimore innovation high school: www.btdhs.org
Disclaimer
It is important to note that the National High School Center does not endorse particular programs or practices.
