Tips for Re-Engaging Out-of-School Youth

Taking aim at the high school dropout rate across the country, the nation’s governors are recommending swift action to reconnect with students who are abandoning their educations.

The NGA offers advice on re-engaging teens who drop out of school.

At a time when educational attainment beyond high school is increasingly  viewed as a necessary step toward employment, more than one million teenagers, age 16 to 19, are not enrolled in school and do not have a high school diploma, according to a new brief released by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center).

The bipartisan organization of the nation's governors—which promotes visionary state leadership, shares best practices and speaks with a collective voice on national policy—issued State Policies to Reengage Dropouts to aid state efforts in diminishing the number of teens not in school. The report provides recommendations for re-engaging out-of-school youth.

States have made considerable progress in preventing students from dropping out of school, yet few state efforts exist to re-engage dropouts and get them back on track to graduation. Dropout recovery presents a unique challenge for states. Out-of-school youth are often difficult to locate and have academic, social and emotional needs that may be difficult for traditional high schools to meet. Thus it is critical for states to build robust policies and programs to re-engage dropouts and support them on the path to obtaining a high school diploma, according to the NGA.

“States need to continue the focus on dropout prevention, but they also need to develop policies to re-engage those individuals who have left,” said John Thomasian, director of the NGA Center. “No matter how effective a state’s dropout prevention efforts, students invariably fall through the cracks. Through the creation of dropout recovery systems, governors can provide out-of-school youth with ways to reengage in school.”

State Policies to Reengage Dropouts identifies four policy recommendations to facilitate the re-engagement of out-of-school youth: 

• Set a goal to reduce the dropout rate
• Use data to identify dropouts and target recovery strategies
• Provide flexible, high-quality school options for recovered dropouts
• Consider incentives to focus on dropout recovery if resources exist

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