White Papers

Three out of 10 high schoolers entering ninth grade in this nation this year will drop out without a degree and will find it difficult to contribute to society in their adult lives. The problem has been called an epidemic. Its costs are estimated at $300 billion per year in lost wages and increased social spending. It is top of the agenda for the education secretary. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has put solving the problem at the top of its agenda. It is one of the few areas where it is still possible to find consensus in our partisan political system.

The Race-to-the-Top program included evaluation metrics that considered the quality of the submitted plans in the area of dropout prevention. It seems that with the consensus around the problem, the funding being made available, a large number of state and district plans being forged, there should be reason to be optimistic. Yet despite considerable efforts to reduce student dropouts over the last decade, there is little measurable progress to report.

This report, written by Christoph Knoess is the founder of Engaged Minds, a Boston-based provider of Learner Relationship Management Solutions. He spells out the promise of data-driven decision making; the habits that undermine the impact of IT; the five principles of Learner Relationship Management and how to get started on this approach; and finally, the five principles of effective drop-out prevention.

"All that is needed is a willingness to break with the past, the obscure standardized risk models, the fruitless crunching of historic student data during the summer months, the organizational hurdles to collaboration, and the concomitant student failure," Knoess states. "You owe it to your students!"

Read more of this white paper by clicking on the pdf button below, and find more helpful information at www.graduationbooster.org