Seattle Public Schools fights to serve more at-risk students

Seattle Public Schools didn’t need a dropout recovery program.

It already had one: The Interagency Academy — a chain of eight small schools, each with a different educational, vocational or social emphasis and each focused on a different subset of at-risk students. The program, which serves more than 1,800 former and potential dropouts, has been lauded by education experts for its commitment to educating students with an incredibly diverse set of needs.

But Seattle’s school leaders weren’t content. They knew that some students just didn’t fit into their current system. And they knew that they could do more to give their students a better-rounded education.

That’s why they partnered with NoDropouts.

“We have students who are parents, or who are working full-time, some of these students are actually quite close to graduation, but there is just absolutely no way they could go to a traditional school,” said the Interagency Academy’s Melinda Leonard. “These are kids who needed an alternative — even an alternative to what we’ve always considered our alternative schools.”

That’s a NoDropouts specialty, but it was a relatively small number of students who needed that specific sort of service. And Seattle school leaders saw an opportunity to use the NoDropouts’ catalog of more than 230 online classes to augment what they were doing for the at-risk students enrolled in their other programs, as well.

The district’s alternative schools, Leonard explained, were built on a “small school” model of no more than 80 students and just a few teachers. That limited the sort of classes that could be offered — which in turn limited opportunities to keep students engaged in new and interesting educational experiences.

“Now, for the first time, we can offer photography, child development, Latin — any foreign language at all, really,” Leonard said. “We have a more robust, richer catalog of classes because of our partnership.”

NoDropouts classes don’t just help offer curricular diversity, though: “We’re really finding that these classes are giving our kids a hope line,” Leonard said. “We’ve got students who are so far behind and this gives those kids a way to supplement what they’re doing and add credits at a little faster rate than what they could be doing in the normal school day.”

Leonard said that helps build her students’ confidence — and gives them another reason to keep working toward graduation.

A half-year into Seattle’s relationship with NoDropouts, Leonard said, “our students have completed more than 200 classes — which is a lot. We’ve beaten our projections, which is great and so we’ve been really happy. I’m excited to see what the next six months will be like.”

Could your school district be serving more at-risk students with a greater diversity of educational opportunities? We can help. Call us at 855-NO-DROPOUTS or send an e-mail to info@nodropouts.com