Effectiveness

Findings

The WWC review of dropout prevention programs addresses student outcomes in three key domains: staying in school, progressing in school, and completing school. The Houston study by Quint et al. (2005) assessed outcomes in the staying in school domain.

Staying in school. In the Houston study Quint et al. (2005) found no statistically significant difference after one year of implementation between First Things First schools and comparison schools in the percentage of ninth-grade students who attended school the following year. The effect size was not large enough to be considered substantively important by WWC standards.

Rating of effectiveness

The WWC rates the effects of an intervention in a given outcome domain as: positive, potentially positive, mixed, no discernible effects, potentially negative, or negative. The rating of effectiveness takes into account four factors: the quality of the research design, the statistical significance of the findings,⁵ the size of the difference between participants in the intervention and the comparison conditions, and the consistency in findings across studies (see the WWC Intervention Rating Scheme).