Early Implementation Report: Mentoring, Educational, and Employment Strategies to Improve Academic, Social, and Career Pathways in Persistently Dangerous Schools. Generation 1

摘要

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) provided funding to nine schools in the form of the Mentoring, Educational, and Employment Strategies to Improve Academic, Social, and Career Pathway Outcomes in Persistently Dangerous Schools Grants (MEES grants). As indicated in the grant title, these nine schools had been designated as persistently dangerous under the Unsafe School Choice Option of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The central goal of the MEES grants is to reduce violence within these schools by combining mentoring, educational, employment, case management, and violence-prevention strategies for positive school change. The schools are using the grant to restructure themselves in ways that expand the levels of services provided to students and enhance coordination of these services within the schools and their communities. DOL contracted with Social Policy Research Associates (SPR) to evaluate how these nine schools have planned, designed, and implemented programs, interventions, and services under the MEES grants. This Early Implementation Report of the Mentoring, Educational, and Employment Strategies to Improve Academic, Social, and Career Pathways in Persistently Dangerous Schools Generation I presents the evaluations findings as of the end of the first year of grant implementation, school year (SY) 2009-2010. The report describes, in depth, the strategies that schools are using to improve school climate and increase academic achievement and summarizes grantees accomplishments and challenges. This evaluation is an early implementation study that relies heavily on qualitative data gathered from nearly thirty telephone interviews and four rounds of site visits to each school. The evaluation also draws on quantitative data from management information system (MIS) reports, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), and the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN).