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Project U-Turn is a citywide
campaign to focus public attention
on Philadelphia’s dropout crisis and
to design strategies and leverage
investments to resolve it. The
U-Turn campaign is led by a
citywide collaborative whose
members include representatives of
the School District, City agencies,
foundations, youth-serving
organizations, parents and young
people themselves. The
collaborative, which is managed by
the
Philadelphia Youth Network, was
established by the Philadelphia
Youth Council in 2004 to oversee
funding from the Youth Transition
Funders Group, a group of national
and local philanthropies committed
to improving educational
opportunities for struggling
students and out-of-school youth.
Key accomplishments of the
collaborative to-date include:
- Ground-breaking data
analyses revealing important
findings, e.g.
-
Dropping out in Philadelphia
is a serious problem in all
racial/ethnic groups, and for
both males and females, but none
of these characteristics have
the strong predictive power of
attendance and course failure.
- About half of the dropouts in
the city’s public schools can be
identified as early as 6th grade
and eighty percent of the
students who eventually dropped
out were either at-risk 8th
graders or at-risk 9th graders
(e.g. poor attendance and course
failure).
- The probability of dropping
out decreases dramatically for
students who arrive at 10th
grade on time, demonstrating the
importance of helping students
to progress steadily towards
graduation.
- Working with the School
District to shape policies and
programs
-
Creating new accelerated high
schools;
- Placing dropout prevention
specialists in seven high
dropout high schools; and
- Building a consensus to align
the policy for parenting
students with state timelines
for child care availability
The collaborative has made a
strong beginning, but much more
remains to be done. Please make a
commitment to strengthening the
long-term well-being of our City by
joining the Project U-Turn campaign.
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