The Right Combination

topics: No Child Left Behind

Fall 2006, Kurt Brobeck, Ideas in Action

Large urban school systems face a daunting challenge: how to meet the graduation rates mandated by their states under No Child Left Behind. In Tennessee, for instance, the legislature has mandated that by 2013-14 high schools must graduate 100 percent of their students on time. Already, Tennessee schools are supposed to have a 90 percent graduation rate. As a system, however, the graduation rate for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools is only 60 percent.

Carolyn Hughes, professor of special education, is trying to do something about this. For the last three years, Hughes has been piloting a mentoring program that pairs college students with students in two of Nashville’s high poverty high schools. Hughes acknowledges that the dropout issue is one of her great passions. “These students need to feel valued,” she says.

Hughes is best known in the special education community for developing a “peer buddy” program initially tested in Nashville high schools and now being disseminated nationwide. The program pairs special education secondary students with students in the general education curriculum. These students mentor their peers with disabilities academically while also building relationships that can help integrate the special education students with the wider social, athletic, and cultural life of their schools. Last year, Hughes and Erik Carter, M.Ed.’98, Ph.D.’04, coauthored a book, Success for All Students (Allyn & Bacon), to meet what had become a steady demand for technical assistance in replicating the program nationwide.

“The Peabody College Mentoring Program seemed to me to be a natural extension of this work,” says Hughes. Mentors are drawn from a service-learning class Hughes offers, “High-Poverty Youth: Improving Outcomes.” Students in the class are paired with general education students from Nashville’s Maplewood or Stratford comprehensive high schools. Both schools serve economically troubled neighborhoods in East Nashville and have graduation rates at or below 50 percent. Mentors may also be paired with students in one of several local after-school programs.

The Vanderbilt students act as role models for high school students who are in the process of transitioning to adult lives. They help with school assignments and high stakes test preparation; encourage mentees to complete high school; give advice about goal setting, managing responsibilities, or applying for college; and offer friendship and other support as their mentees make plans for the future. Typically, mentors spend time with their mentees once or twice a week, talk with them on the phone, or communicate via e-mail. “For many mentees, a caring and consistent adult presence can make a positive difference in their outlook and aspirations,” says Hughes.

Nor is the mentoring program a one-way street. The mentors themselves benefit from interacting with youth who come from very different backgrounds than is typical for many Vanderbilt students. The Vanderbilt students are required to put a certain number of hours into mentoring and to keep a journal reflecting on their experiences. During class sessions, the students discuss readings and learn about the effects of poverty on youth, their families, and their schools. For many, the program provides their first opportunity to develop an experiential awareness of the inequalities that exist in schools, neighborhoods, and broader civic and economic contexts. “Some of them discover a real passion for service,” she says.

“What I feel good about,” says Hughes, “is giving students an opportunity to find out for themselves how to live an effective adult life. For some, this is their first experience with disenfranchised people. They learn that if these kids are behind, there are a number of factors that have come together to cause that to happen. Many of them will someday find themselves in positions where they hold the purse strings, make decisions, or influence others. I hope this is knowledge they will pass along.”

Hughes’s commitment to helping disadvantaged students is deeply felt. In 2001-02, she took a year’s sabbatical to teach middle school boys with emotional disturbance in one of New York City’s troubled schools. But she is certainly not alone in her concern about high school graduation rates. In April, Time magazine highlighted the problem of graduation rates with a cover story entitled, “Dropout Nation.” Coinciding with the publication of that story, Oprah Winfrey devoted two consecutive episodes of her show to the issue. Since then, statistical experts have engaged in a small war over how to measure the dropout rate. Whether one believes the dropout rate is as high as 30 percent or as low as 15 percent, either number represents a growing threat to a nation competing globally in a science and technology-based economy.

A month prior to the one-two punch of Time and Oprah, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released a report on the issue, “The Silent Epidemic.” The Foundation’s report is significant in that it gives voice to actual high school dropouts—to the reasons they give for leaving school, and to the possible reforms they think might have enabled them to stay and graduate. The report was developed by Civic Enterprises with Peter D.Hart Research Associates; together they conducted focus groups and interviewed 467 dropouts nationwide between the ages of 16 and 25. Those interviewed came from a wide variety of urban, suburban, and rural backgrounds; whites, blacks, and Hispanics—both male and female—were represented.

In Nashville, Metro Superintendent Pedro Garcia, Mayor Bill Purcell, school principals, community leaders, parents, and even students are also concerned. Hughes has recently been appointed to a task force made up of representatives from these groups charged with developing strategies to address the issue. Garcia has earmarked $100,000 in next year’s budget to devote to the challenge. The mayor has also received a $40,000 planning grant from the U.S. Conference of Mayors to study the issue. According to Hughes, the group is exploring such ideas as flexible scheduling, reorganizing the school day, and creating learning communities or academies with particular career themes within larger high schools. Based on her assessment of the impact of the peer mentoring program so far, she sees mentoring as another valuable strategy in the struggle to keep young people in school. “Testing and accountability are good things, but there is a price to pay, and I worry that it may be paid in time spent on building positive relationships. Mentoring addresses this problem.”

Can Mentoring Help Solve the Dropout Problem?

Although far from a comprehensive solution to the dropout problem, there is evidence to suggest that mentoring can play an important role in keeping disadvantaged students in school.

Carolyn Hughes’s assessments—made through focus groups and interviews—indicate that youth who participate in the Peabody Mentoring Program are experiencing more successful academic and life outcomes.

Increasing numbers of students at Maplewood and Stratford High Schools are planning to go on to college. Forty-one percent of Stratford’s graduating seniors have been accepted at post-secondary educational institutions—a proportion higher than school personnel can remember. Hughes believes the mentors are a contributing factor.

The Gates Foundation’s study, published in "The Silent Epidemic," reported that of the dropouts interviewed, only 59 percent indicated that their parents or guardians were involved in their education.

More than half of parents who became involved did so for discipline reasons.

Only 41 percent of dropouts said they had had an adult in school with whom they could talk about personal problems.

Both Time and the Gates Foundation list mentoring among their recommendations.