A high school diploma is essential to success on the job market. As part of our policy and practice agenda around high school completion, the PIC focuses on re-engagement as the essential complement to dropout prevention, which has gotten more attention, historically.
Re-Engagement Center
The Re-Engagement Center (REC) reaches out to BPS students who have dropped out or are chronically absent, groups that are disproportionately Black, Latino, and low-income (both nationally and locally). The REC helps them re-enroll in a traditional school or alternative program and then supports them at their placement. The majority of students who have dropped out are behind in credits for their age, and the REC has the expertise to connect them with specialized alternative options to accelerate their academic progress. Alternative schools and programs also offer flexibility and different approaches to learning that can suit the varied needs of students who did not succeed in their original schools.
Youth Transitions Task Force
At the same time that the PIC is providing a much-needed direct service at the REC, it is also taking a collective impact approach to increasing the graduation rate through the Youth Transitions Task Force. The YTTF convenes a broad group of partners—including the Boston Public Schools, community organizations, city departments, state agencies, and philanthropy—to develop engagement, support, and equity strategies with the goal of bringing the high school dropout rate to zero.
History
In 2004,the PIC began to work on high school re-engagement during a dropout crisis. A study conducted by the Youth Transitions Task Force (YTTF) with the Center for Labor Market Studies found that 1,872 students dropped out of the BPS system in the 2005-06 school year. The study also found that a college graduate earns three times the lifetime revenue of a high school student who drops out and lives nearly a decade longer. In addition, the study revealed that over a lifetime, each student who drops out actually costs the public almost a half-million dollars through lost revenue and increased government spending, while graduates add funds through increased tax contributions and decreased use of social services.
In 2006, to address the dropout crisis, the PIC hired outreach specialists, former dropouts themselves, to reenroll young people in the BPS. This work, and its success, inspired the BPS to establish the Re-Engagement Center (REC) in a partnership with the PIC in 2009. The REC also collects data on students’ needs and academic profiles in order to inform the district’s policy and programming development.
Since the PIC’s work with dropouts began in 2006, 2,814 students have re-enrolled or enrolled in a BPS alternative education program with the support of the REC, and 655 of them have earned a high school diploma. Between 2006 and 2023, the number of students dropping out of the BPS annually fell from 1,872 to 650, a 65% reduction.