|
|
Dropout
Research
The WWC reviewed seven studies of the effectiveness of Career Academies. One study (Kemple & Snipes, 2000; Kemple, 2004) was a randomized controlled trial that met WWC evidence standards. Six studies did not meet WWC evidence screens.
The Kemple and Snipes (2000) and Kemple (2004) study was a randomized controlled trial that included a total of 1,764 students who applied to the entrance grade (9th or 10th) of nine Career Academies included in the evaluation. Of these, 474 students were predicted to be at high risk of dropping out of high school. 2 The study measured outcomes at the end of a student's projected 12th-grade year and then four years after a student's projected 12th-grade year.
2 This report focuses on the 474 youth in the study sample who were most at risk of dropping out of high school because the Career Academies model initially focused on high-risk youth; these youth represent 27% of the total study sample of 1,764. Researchers used student background characteristics (including sibling dropped out, overage for grade, transferred schools two or more times, and attendance, GPA, and credits earned in the year of random assignment) to develop a model to predict whether students in the comparison group dropped out of school, and then applied the estimated model to predict which intervention-group students were most likely to drop out. The findings for those youth considered less at-risk of dropping out of school are presented in Appendices A4.1–A4.3.