Giving Compass' Take:

• The Thomas B. Fordham Institute reports on the Boston-based City Connects program, which provides outside-the-classroom interventions at the elementary school level in order to prevent future dropouts.

• What can we learn from the City Connects approach to youth development, whether it's tutoring or health services? One is that there is no single answer: a multi-faceted structure should be in place.

• Here's a challenge to traditional homework in elementary schools and how changes could help students.

The City Connects program is an initiative of Boston College that works to address non-cognitive barriers to student success among elementary school pupils in Boston Public Schools (BPS), as well as charter and private school students in Boston and other nearby cities. It was piloted in six low-performing BPS elementary schools in 2001, assessing needs and providing access to services for students via a third party rather than through the schools themselves.

Those services can include academic tutoring, social-emotional development, health needs, and family supports. Full-time coordinators are embedded in the schools and monitor need, referrals, and successful use of these services, obviating the need for teachers to become de facto social workers and for school administrators to become service providers ...

How does an elementary-level intervention help reduce the likelihood of dropouts by nearly fifty percent years after treatment has stopped? Part of the reason could be that students are connected with service providers independent of their elementary schools. It is possible that service provision along many lines continued throughout middle and high school, but the researchers do not test that possibility, noting only that the effects of treatment are significant over time. City Connects touts its multi-faceted and student-centric support structure as addressing multiple barriers to student success.

Read the full article about addressing high school dropout rates starting at the elementary school level by Jeff Murray at The Thomas B. Fordham Institute.