Reaching students who drop out means not ignoring those who age out

Of the two roads leading away from high school – one with a high school diploma, the other without – the road without typically does not go very far.

Over the course of their lifetime, each high school dropout will cost themselves, their families, and their community $650,000 in reduced earnings and increased public expenses. Not only is there the sad loss of opportunity for the individual, communities have to absorb lost tax revenue, the costs of welfare and other benefits, and the increased rates of arrest and incarceration.

A significant portion of those dropouts never move more than seven miles away from the school they did not finish. That means the brunt of poor graduation rates are borne by the community where these students live. St. Lucie Public Schools in Florida is one example of a district that understands this problem. St. Lucie also understands the solution. 

There is much we can learn from St. Lucie’s solution and the stunning turnaround it fostered. Fifteen years ago, high school graduation rates in the district hovered around 65%. Yet in less than the span of a single generation, the in-cohort graduation rate improved to an impressive 94%. Those numbers have been consistent for years now; 90% or more of its students have graduated in-cohort for a remarkable eight consecutive years.

St. Lucie’s solution was not unusual nor mysterious except perhaps for focusing on the problem irrespective of the typical in-cohort graduation metric. Two primary things that have proven effective in districts all over the country were put to work. Both seem obvious, but one is rather remarkable. 

In the first case, the obvious, their approach to intervention was relatively simple. The district partnered with outside providers to refine and expand its alternative education programs. There were several of them, each slightly different, yet similar in that none of them felt like what we normally expect school to be. Instead, realizing that the young adult students they served had significantly different needs from their peers, they introduced programs that operated differently. 

We know about this different approach because we provide alternative programs to districts across the country including St. Lucie. These programs look like this: instead of crowded hallways and traditional desk-lined classrooms, these schools offer a smaller, flexible environment where students can relax in comfortable chairs as they work on coursework, or meet with their coach, collaborate with peers, and explore career paths. 

Additionally, rather than juggle multiple courses, students in these alternative programs take one subject at a time and proceed at their own pace. They are encouraged and guided by a coach who knows them well and monitors their progress. There is room to adjust to work schedules, child care, and the shifting of unstable home environments they might be facing.

The other element of success in St. Lucie’s case was that they developed an early warning system to identify students at risk of dropping out, then connected the students with this targeted support program. The district hired a full team of graduation coaches, which quickly showed what was possible when students got the right help at the right time. 

Coaching is not novel. As a society, we recognize that individual coaching and encouragement work across a range of difficult endeavors. This is why health clubs work. It’s why counseling and career mentorships work. It should be little surprise that coaching works in education, too. 

Incidentally, this was not the only thing St. Lucie did to enhance its graduation rates, but it very well could have been the most important.

The other highly effective factor in St. Lucie’s turnaround, the part they may never get enough credit for – is that they not only invested in students who might drop out, they invested in students who already had. These are the out-of-cohort adult students who’ve already moved into their adult lives without their high school diploma.

This commitment to everyone, to every student regardless of age is remarkable. School districts don’t get to recapture that data point. The effort to recapture and re-engage these students who, in the eyes of all-important education data, had already been counted against the school for having not graduated, is what took the program from being marginally effective to being significant. 

We have to cheer St. Lucie for doing it anyway – for reaching out to former students, those pushed out of the system once already, and pulling them into an alternative program, designed to meet them wherever they happen to be. 

St. Lucie proves that it’s possible to keep more students on the road that leads to a successful high school graduation. Moving from a 65% to 94% graduation rate proves the benefits extend to in-cohort students, too. 

It’s not difficult to appreciate and cheer for a district that is serving more than their data, going out of their way, maybe off their traditional mandate, to serve their community and their students. To serve one by serving the other.

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