Philadelphia Children's Connection

"Project U-Turn is a citywide campaign to focus public attention on Philadelphia’s dropout crisis and to design strategies and leverage investments to resolve it. The U-Turn campaign is led by a citywide collaborative whose members include representatives of the School District, City agencies, foundations, youth-serving organizations, parents and young people themselves. The collaborative, which is managed by the Philadelphia Youth Network, was established by the Philadelphia Youth Council in 2004 to oversee funding from the Youth Transition Funders Group, a group of national and local philanthropies committed to improving educational opportunities for struggling students and out-of-school youth.

Key accomplishments of the collaborative to-date include:

Ground-breaking data analyses revealing important findings, e.g.
- Dropping out in Philadelphia is a serious problem in all racial/ethnic groups, and for both males and females, but none of these characteristics have the strong predictive power of attendance and course failure.
- About half of the dropouts in the city’s public schools can be identified as early as 6th grade and eighty percent of the students who eventually dropped out were either at-risk 8th graders or at-risk 9th graders (e.g. poor attendance and course failure).
- The probability of dropping out decreases dramatically for students who arrive at 10th grade on time, demonstrating the importance of helping students to progress steadily towards graduation.
Working with the School District to shape policies and programs
- Creating new accelerated high schools;
- Placing dropout prevention specialists in seven high dropout high schools; and
- Building a consensus to align the policy for parenting students with state timelines for child care availability

The collaborative has made a strong beginning, but much more remains to be done. Please make a commitment to strengthening the long-term well-being of our City by joining the Project U-Turn campaign. "

Project U Turn