Check and Connect (Dropout prevention program for high school students with learning, emotional, and/or behavioral disabilities)

Randomized controlled trials show a sizable decrease in students’ dropout rates, and increase in attendance and academic credits earned.

Description of the intervention:  Check and Connect is a dropout prevention program for high school students with learning, emotional, and/or behavioral disabilities.  Students typically enter the program in 9th grade, and are assigned a “monitor” (e.g. a graduate student, special education teacher, or community member with experience in human services), who works with them year-round as a mentor, advisor, and service coordinator.

On a daily basis, monitors work with school personnel to track and document students’ attendance, behavior (e.g. detention referrals, suspensions), and academic performance (e.g. course failure, credits earned).

Monitors meet at least monthly, and often weekly, with students to give them feedback on these measures of school engagement.  During these meetings, monitors talk with students about how certain life choices might stand in the way of their graduating (e.g. engaging in criminal activity, abusing substances, having a child); convey a strong message about the importance of persisting in school; teach them effective problem-solving strategies and conflict-resolution skills; and help them develop a plan for making responsible life choices.  Monitors also help students find productive extracurricular activities both during the school year and summer (e.g. sports, clubs, summer jobs).

Monitors meet more frequently with students who persistently exhibit high-risk behaviors, such as poor attendance/school performance, or severe behavioral problems.  The monitors provide these students with more intensive, personalized assistance, such as finding a tutor for a student whose grades are slipping, or enrolling a student in a structured extracurricular activity to keep him or her away from a delinquent peer group.

Monitors also encourage students’ parents to stay actively involved in their child’s education – for example, by communicating frequently with their child’s teachers.

Monitors typically work 20 to 35 hours per week while carrying an average caseload of approximately 35 students.  They work with students for at least two years, wherever possible staying with the same students throughout high school even when they change schools within the school district.

The program is overseen at the school level by a program coordinator (e.g. special education coordinator, school psychologist, or special education resource teacher), who provides monitors with regular advice and feedback.  Check and Connect costs approximately $1600 per student per year to implement, in 2006 dollars.

Click here for more information on Check and Connect.

Evidence of Effectiveness

Study 1

Randomized controlled trial of 206 substantially at-risk ninth grade students, who were receiving special education services for emotional or behavioral disabilities in seven high schools in a large, high-poverty urban school district.  Students (or in a few cases, siblings) were randomly assigned to a group that was invited to participate in the Check and Connect program, or a control group that was not.

84% of students were male, 64% were African American, and 70% were eligible for free or reduced lunch.

Effects of Check and Connect at the four-year follow-up — i.e. end of 12th grade (versus the control group)

• 42% increase in the percentage of students who had completed high school via diploma or GED, or were still enrolled (61% of Check and Connect group completed school or were still enrolled vs. 43% of the control group).  This increase was driven by an increase in the percentage still enrolled, rather than by an increase in the percentage already completing high school.
• 37% increase in the rate of persistent attendance—i.e. no long periods of unexcused absences during the fourth year of the follow-up (41% vs. 30%)

Discussion of study quality (click here for a glossary of terms)

• The study had a long-term follow-up (i.e., 4 years).
• This was a relatively large study conducted in typical high-poverty public schools, thus providing evidence of Check and Connect’s effectiveness in real-world public school settings.
• The study measured outcomes using an intention to treat analysis.
• Prior to the intervention, there were no systematic differences between the Check and Connect and control groups in their demographic characteristics, nor in their teachers’ ratings of behavior and social/academic competence.
• The study’s main outcomes (attendance, enrollment, and graduation) were measured through official school records, rather than student self-reports.
• Study Limitation:  The study had a moderate amount of attrition – specifically, attendance, enrollment, and graduation data were obtained for 70% of students at the four-year follow-up.  Statistical tests suggest that the attrition did not cause any observable differences between the Check and Connect and control groups that might undermine the validity of the results.  However, the study results should be treated with caution because the attrition could have caused unobservable differences between the two groups, leading to inaccurate estimates of the program’s effects.

Source

Sinclair, Mary F., Sandra L. Christenson, and Martha L. Thurow. “Promoting School Completion of Urban Secondary Youth With Emotional or Behavioral Disabilities.”  Exceptional Children. Vol. 71, No. 4, 2005, pp. 465-482.

Study 2

Randomized controlled trial of 94 substantially at-risk ninth grade students with learning or emotional/behavioral disabilities, in a northern Midwest, high-poverty urban school district.  All 94 students had participated in Check and Connect in 7th and 8th grades; upon entering high school, they were randomly assigned to a group that continued in Check and Connect in 9th grade, or to a control group that did not.

68% of the students were male, 59% were African American, and 71% were eligible for free or reduced lunch.

Effects of Check and Connect at the end of 9th grade (versus the control group)

• 29% increase in the percentage of students still enrolled in school (91% of Check and Connect students were still enrolled vs. 70% of control group students)
• 83% increase in average number of credits earned (12.1 vs. 6.6), and more than double the rate of students whose earned credits put them on pace to graduate on-time (46% vs. 20%).
• 33% increase in the rate of persistent attendance—i.e. no long periods of unexcused absences during 9th grade (85% vs. 64%).

Description of study quality (click here for a glossary of terms)

• The study had virtually no attrition:  Attendance and enrollment status data were collected for 100% of the sample, and data on academic credits earned were collected for 98% of the sample.
• The study was conducted in typical high-poverty public schools, thus providing evidence of Check and Connect’s effectiveness in real-world public school settings.
• Prior to the intervention, there were no systematic differences between the Check and Connect and control groups in their demographic characteristics or type of disability.
• The study measured attendance, enrollment, and credits earned using official school records rather than student self-reports.
• Study limitation:  This was a very well-designed randomized controlled trial, but it was fairly small and had only a one school-year follow up.  Importantly, however, its results are corroborated by Study 1, which had a larger sample and a four-year follow-up.

Source

Sinclair, Mary F., Sandra L. Christenson, David L. Evelo, and Christine M. Hurley.  “Dropout Prevention for Youth with Disabilities: Efficacy of a Sustained School Engagement Procedure.”  Exceptional Children. Vol. 65, No. 1, 1998, pp. 7-21.