The CTA IFT is considering a number of follow-up steps to the May 16 – 17 Closing the Achievement Gap for Minority Students: Understanding the Culture of Success Workshop. From pilot studies and surveys to teacher interventions and foundation proposals, the CTA IFT will be initiating and supporting various efforts to examine and encourage a school-wide culture of success to close the achievement gap for African American and Latino students. One important first step is the CTA IFT proposal to reduce African American and Latino student dropouts. With the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the CTA IFT is initiating a broad based, bottom-up plan to reduce high school dropouts. The CTA IFT will introduce and use the Positive Deviance (PD) approach to reduce high school dropouts in order to identify key behaviors and practices that encourage student retention. The PD approach uncovers school community practices and behavioral norms related to high school dropout practices and behavioral norms that encourage students to remain in high school and graduate. In other words, the Positive Deviancy approach is a tool to discover why certain students with access to the same resources remain in high school while others dropout. Past school reform efforts have focused primarily on problem behaviors or in this case dropouts. The PD approach turns school reform on its head by focusing our attention and energy on the behaviors and practices we desire – student retention and graduation. A brief summary of the PD approach as it relates to dropouts includes four steps:
1. Define the problem. School community stakeholders at the ground level define the problem.
2. Determine who the students are that exhibit the desired behaviors and practices. PD asks students who are most likely to dropout of school to identify peers that they believe will remain in school and graduate.
3. Discover the practices and behaviors of students who remain in school and graduate. Discover what other stakeholders do to support students who remain in school and graduate.
4. Design an intervention that enables other students in the school community to grasp and practice the behaviors to stay in school and graduate.
Interested school – community stakeholders are invited to the August 29th Statewide Information Meeting to Reduce Dropouts to learn more about the PD Approach and how it can be used to increase student retention and graduation rates. This meeting will run from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. Immediately following this meeting (on the same day), you will have the opportunity to become a member of the Statewide Planning Team to Reduce Dropouts. The Planning Team meeting will run from 2:15 pm to 5:00 pm. Both meetings will take place in Sacramento at the Region 2 Building. Contact the CTA IFT for more information.
