The disengagement that leads to school dropout may start as early as middle school, but may be interrupted by motivational interventions. One approach is to promote the relevance of content through explanations and demonstrations of the value of this content to students' futures. CareerStart is an intervention that provides teachers prepackaged…

Project LION (Learning In Our Neighborhood) was a community partnership between a local University, a Charitable Foundation, the City, and the Parish (County) School System that provided affordable afterschool academic and enrichment activities for students who are at risk in grades 4 through 8. The multiple-year foundation grant provided program…

School engagement is a key factor in maintaining school attendance and in diminishing dropout rates. In this study, four dimensions that compose school engagement--cognitive, affective, behavioral, and agentic--were evaluated with a self-report questionnaire (Veiga, 2013), and comparisons between rural and urban schools were made. A total of 802…

Youth who receive services from public mental health, child welfare and delinquency, and homeless systems are often exposed to a number of overlapping child, family, school, and community risk factors. Minimal research, however, has focused on the extent to which single- or multiple-system involvement influences school dropout. Relying on an…

Students across the nation are encountering more and more difficulties in their transition to high school. Not only are a significant number of students dropping out, but those who stay are also leaving high school without the skills they need to become productive citizens. Several intervention strategies are recommended to help students make a…

For over two years the National Dropout Prevention Center (NDPC) at Clemson University has been supporting the Lower Kuskokwim School District (LKSD) in NW Alaska with their efforts to reduce high school dropout in 23 remote Yup'ik Eskimo villages. The Rural Alaska Mentoring Project (RAMP) provides school-based E-mentoring services to 164…

When students struggle in the elementary and middle grades, the likelihood that they will drop out of high school increases dramatically. Although most dropout prevention resources have focused on high schools in a last-ditch effort to keep students in school, earlier interventions in elementary and middle grades provide a better opportunity to…

The author shares a story about the positive power of nature in the lives of children, particularly those children who are at-risk for school failure. The setting for the story is the Central Child Development Center (CCDC) in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a public preschool with four-year-old kindergarten students (4K) and preschoolers with special…