Solving chronic absenteeism is 'a people business'

YouthBuild focuses on a tough demographic: 18- to 21-year-old drop-outs who are eligible for neither regular high school nor adult education. The program mixes classroom learning and vocational education, qualifying them for entry-level jobs or college.

Journalist Marcella Bombardieri calls community college "one of America's largest and most important anti-poverty programs." The president of Amarillo College in Texas is testing just how far community colleges can go to fight systemic issues - day care, social workers, and emergency funds for students' daily expenses are part of his plan. Other administrators are looking on at the dramatic experiment with mixed views and takeaways.

Georgia State University's predictive analytics system has helped students graduate by flagging at-risk students using a variety of factors, including college and high school grades, financial aid statuses, and more. While other universities attempt to scale the program to increase retention at their universities as well, serious concerns about privacy and surveillance persist, as do hesitations regarding the cost of expanding advisory services as Georgia State has done.

In several small rural towns in Texas, mental health professionals from Texas Tech are offering telemedicine counseling to make up for a lack of counselors available in local middle and high schools. The Governor's office has now asked the successful school districts to develop a training program for teachers in other Texas districts in order to scale the model.

Changing the culture in university Greek Life requires proactive collaboration between students and university staff. The University of Oregon’s Sexual Violence Prevention Leadership Board (SVPLB) is composed of representatives of each of the University’s Greek Life groups and managed with the assistance of a faculty liaison. In weekly meetings, members of the group discuss sexual violence prevention, consent, and setting boundaries. The faculty liaison, meanwhile, provides support and institutional memory for the group as students graduate.

The Romani Education Fund in Slovakia is helping children from the Roma community, which has a history of social and economic disadvantages as well as being subject to ethnic discrimination, overcome challenges to finish high school and pursue higher education. The REF works by providing qualifying students with a stipend to pay for educational supplies, as well as providing school guidance and personal mentorship to help both students and parents overcome the social hurdles that impede the student's desire or ability to fulfill their potential.

Over 200 teenage girls in northwestern Nigeria have been trained to produce reusable sanitary napkins and tampons, which they can use for personal use and sell to make extra money. In fact, they have sold over 15,000 packs of reusable menstrual hygiene products worth 3.5 million naira, both improving the lives of users and becoming a viable livelihood for communities. The kits contain three cotton-based reusable products, each of which last three to six months. The project was supported as part of the United Nations’ COVID-19 response in Nigeria.

Securecycle is a nonprofit working to reduce the number of young students not attending school in Ogun State, Nigeria. The organization collects old jeans to turn into bags and finds students who are, or will likely, drop out of school to teach them bag production and give them a scholarship to finish primary school.

Programs like the American Association of Caregiving Youth (AACY) advocate for and provide support to youth caregivers who are responsible for caring for sick, elderly, or adults with disabilities at home. AACY’s Youth Caregiver Project provides support in school and at home by offering customized services based on each student’s needs, including tutoring, counseling and even connections to food resources or school supplies. AACY serves about 600 students in 30 schools each year. Since the Youth Caregiver Project began in the late 1990s, about 2,000 youth have completed the program.

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an approach to student behavior that focuses on how well students embody five standards — respect, responsibility, readiness, safety and pride — and awards points based on their behaviors that can be redeemed for rewards. PBIS offers an alternative to the “zero tolerance” student behavior policies that have been known to hurt academic achievement, particularly among students of color. Studies show that schools with a PBIS approach saw classroom removals decrease by 58% and out-of-school suspensions decreased by about half.