Invest In Success

The Problem:

The current cohort graduation rate in North Carolina is 70 percent. This means that 30 percent of our students drop out of school, and for African-American males, less than 50 percent graduate. From a social standpoint, we know that failure to graduate high school almost always means a life of poverty, a much greater likelihood of criminal activity, lengthy periods of unemployment, a much less healthy lifestyle and poor decision-making skills. From a financial standpoint, at $5,400 per dropout per year, the dropouts from the freshman class of academic year 2003-2004 will cost the State $161.2 million this year and the next year and so on. If this isn’t scary enough, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there were 1.6 million high school dropouts in North Carolina in 2007, and we are currently adding more to this number each year than we are losing. All of these dropouts will cost the State $8.6 billion this year; well over one-third of the original 2009 State budget, and four times the projected shortfall. We also know the following about our high school dropouts:

1. They are twice as likely to be unemployed, three times as likely to be arrested and six times as likely to be unwed parents.
2. Almost 82% of youth offenders in North Carolina are dropouts and juvenile incarceration costs $79K/year (NCDJJDP).
3. Of the 39,746 inmates in NC prisons at the end of 2008, 27,688 or 70 percent were dropouts, and their incarceration costs alone were $692 million.

The Solution

CIS is results oriented and cost effective. Last year North Carolina CIS affiliates:

• Served almost 164,000 children and their families in 50 counties;
• Recruited 20,422 volunteers who contributed over 397,000 hours of their time;
• Helped 98.3 percent of CIS students stay in school;
• And provided all of these services at a cost of $177 per child. (NOTE: Remember, a single dropout will cost society $5,400 per year, every year.)

Communities In Schools (CIS) is the largest and most effective “dropout prevention network” in the country. In 2005, ICF International, a well-respected research institute having no ties to CIS, began a five-year evaluation of the CIS model as well as other dropout prevention programs across the country. In the Spring of this year, ICF released the first results of that study. Based on an in-depth analysis of 1,766 CIS schools and comparative analysis of outcomes for more than 1,200 CIS and non-CIS comparison schools over a three-year period ICF International found that:

> Among dropout prevention programs using scientifically-based evidence, the CIS Model is one of a very few in the United States proven to keep students in school and is the only dropout prevention program in the nation with scientifically-based evidence to prove that it increases graduation rates.

> When implemented with high fidelity, the CIS Model results in a higher percentage of students reaching proficiency in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math.

> Effective implementation of the CIS Model correlates more strongly with positive school-level outcomes (i.e., dropout and graduation rates, achievement, etc.) than does the uncoordinated provision of service alone, resulting in notable improvements of school level outcomes in the context of the CIS Model.

Invest In Success for our children and their futures.

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