City Year corps members monitor attendance and work closely with students to improve attendance through school-wide initiatives, one-on-one coaching (including phone calls home) and communication with parents and guardians. Attendance is a significant driver of student achievement and an important predictor of graduation. Corps members call home reporting a student's progress and attendance record.
Research from Johns Hopkins University has found that likely dropouts can be identified as early as elementary school by early warning indicators: high absences, poor behaviors and course failure in math or English. If a student in the sixth grade in a high-poverty school has even one of these indicators, he has less likely to graduate high school six years later. Excessive school absenteeism precedes grade failure, loss of interest, resulting in students withdrawing from school.
City Year corps members greet students on the school house steps, working closely with teachers and students to monitor and improve attendance through special initiatives and communications to parents and guardians. By calling home and reporting a student's progress and attendance record to parents, corps members are helping their students stay in school and to succeed.
Students who progress to 10th grade with their peers are four times more likely to graduate than students who fall behind.Our Long-Term Impact goal is to ensure 80% of the students in the schools City Year serves reach 10th grade on track and on time, serving the majority of at-risk students in the locations where City Year serves. City Year focuses that service in communities where the dropout challenge is most concentrated, ultimately serving two thirds of the nation's dropouts.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
