Officials from businesses, nonprofits and government agencies yesterday pledged to join in the effort to keep students in school and help those who have dropped out get into educational and training programs they need.
The pledges came at the launch of a dropout-prevention campaign called Project U-Turn at the Liacouras Center and the release of a study showing 30,000 students left school between 2000 and 2005.
The findings are a "call to action," said Paul Vallas, chief executive of the city's schools.
Many in the audience, including mayoral candidate Michael A. Nutter and U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa), a potential candidate, signed a large poster pledging support for the Project U-Turn campaign.
"This is not a time to point fingers," Tracee Hunt, vice president for human resources at the Philadelphia Coca-Cola Bottling Co. and chair of the Philadelphia Youth Council, told community leaders, dropouts and their parents. "It's a time to take action. We're all in this together."
David Fair, vice president of community impact at the United Way Southeastern Pennsylvania, said his agency hoped to make it possible for donors to target their charitable giving to programs that help youth, including efforts that help at-risk students in key transition years, including eighth grade.
Julia Danzy, the city director of social services, said the city would join with the district and others "to change the tragedy that is happening to our youth."
And State Rep. James Roebuck (D., Phila.) later said he had been working with the district to develop a legislative package of programs that could reduce the dropout rate statewide.
"This is not an event," promised Laura Shubilla, president of the Philadelphia Youth Network, lead agency in the consortium that organized the campaign. "This is the beginning of a citywide movement that will grow and gain momentum."
Called the Philadelphia Youth Collaborative, the consortium includes the school district, local organizations, and city agencies. Yesterday it released reports describing the city's dropout problem and recommendations for solving it.
The collaborative also held a daylong expo that provided counseling and information about educational and training programs for dropouts. Melissa Orner, spokeswoman for the Philadelphia Youth Network, said young men and women had lined up outside the Liacouras Center before the doors opened. By 5:30 p.m., she said, 200 had attended and some signed up for diploma and high school equivalency programs with vacancies.
The dropout report, prepared by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, tracked individual district students from 2000 to 2005 using school and social service data collected by the University of Pennsylvania to paint an unprecedented portrait of dropouts.
Among other things, they found that between 48 and 54 percent of students who began ninth grade between 2000 and 2005 graduated on time. The rates improved to between 61 percent and 63 percent after six years. The rest dropped out without earning diplomas.
In all, 30,000 students dropped out of the city's public schools between 2000 and 2005, they said.
The researchers also found warning signs indicating that a student could become a dropout. For example, they said eighth graders who attend school less than 80 percent of the time and fail either English or math have a 75 percent probability of dropping out of high school.
Intervening at that time, they said, could keep those students on track.
Vallas said the district had already begun to pilot promising alternative education programs. Next month it will open a small alternative program for at-risk eighth graders that will focus on boosting their math and English skills.
But he said the district would need broad support to obtain city, state and federal money to expand the programs to serve all the students who need them. He did not specify an amount.
"There is an emergency here," he said. "What we need to do is take this report and move forward with an action plan."
For an Inquirer multimedia report on the dropout study, go to http://go.philly.com/projectuturn
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