Preventing Future High School Dropouts

Rutgers professor’s mentoring program for keeping adolescents in school has found its way across the country and overseas

'People might say these children are lazy or rebellious. We say they haven’t yet learned the skills necessary to stay out of trouble or to stay in school.'

 

– Brenna Bry

Every year, an estimated 20 percent of students drop out of high schools in the United States before receiving their diplomas.

The dropout rate has been steadily declining over the past 15 years, recently reaching all-time lows, thanks in part to initiatives such as Achievement Mentoring, a school-based program created by a Rutgers professor more than four decades ago.

Brenna Bry’s vision has been adopted by nearly 90 school districts nationwide – and has even made its way to Ireland.

“The way we teach is not by telling students what to do, which is what a lot of adults do, but by breaking down the skills that need to be learned into little, doable steps,” says Bry, a professor in Rutgers’ Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. 

“People might say these children are lazy or rebellious. We say they haven’t yet learned the skills necessary to stay out of trouble or to stay in school.”

The Midwest native originally crafted her program in 1973 at the request of the Monmouth County Narcotics Council. At the time, the council was looking for a way to work with seventh-graders at risk for developing substance-abuse problems – and thus at risk of not finishing school.

Bry, who received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Missouri-Columbia, reasoned that the best approach would involve an ongoing student-mentor relationship.

The mentor – either a full-time worker at the school or someone hired by an outside agency – would work closely with the youngsters, meeting regularly with their teachers and establishing the incremental goals Bry believes are the program’s essential building blocks.

Instead of branding youngsters with negative personality traits, educators participating in the program work to transform non-productive habits into usable skills. Instead of presenting the students with large, overwhelming challenges, mentees and mentors collaborate to identify small, easily attained goals.

“It could be as simple as bringing a pencil to class, or raising a hand before calling out,” Bry says. “It could be doing one homework assignment, or attending homework club once a week. We want the goals to be small and reachable, so the student can succeed.”

The adult mentors try hard not to tell the student what to do, Bry says; rather, they wait for the students to generate their own ideas, in essence teaching them that they can solve their own problems.

Mentors meet weekly with their assigned students, either individually or in small groups. They also contact parents every month with positive feedback.

Last year, Bry won a Prevention Science Award recognizing her role in helping develop evidence-based prevention strategies to address the issue. The National Dropout Prevention Center named her initiative a model program.

As her program spread to Michigan, North Carolina, New York and Delaware, Bry partnered with the Center for Supportive Schools in Princeton to provide the training. The center’s records indicate that more than 450 school or community agency personnel have participated in the past two decades.

Participating school districts are required to make a two-year commitment, the period Bry’s research has determined to be most effective.

“For many of our youths, bad habits took 12 to 14 years to develop; it takes at least two years to learn new ones,” she says.

The program’s success is reflected in participants’ improved attendance, promptness and grades, as well as in reduced discipline problems in schools, as measured against similar at-risk students who do not have an achievement mentor.

Mentored students were arrested significantly fewer times than their non-mentored peers, and dropped out of high school at lower rates, follow-up studies reveal.

In the fall of 2010, Bry flew to Dublin to launch her program there, conducting the training of the first group of mentors herself. She continued to visit Ireland a couple of times a year for the next three years, until she accredited trainers from the Archway Agency in nearby Clondalkin to take over.

The program found a warm welcome in the Emerald Isle.  “The Mentor Achievement Program has worked like a dream in our school,” attests Eithne O’Shea, principal of the St. Thomas Senior National School in Jobstown, in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains.

Not only do the children respond well to its precepts, O’Shea says, but the teachers also are enthusiastic about the results they’re seeing.

A resident of East Stroudsburg, Pa., Bry stepped down as chair of the Department of Clinical Psychology at GSAPP last September, but continues as a full-time faculty member.