Ed. Magazine: Dropping Out: Is Your First Grader at Risk?

In January 2013, Joshua Starr, Ed.M.’98, Ed.D.’01, the superintendent of Montgomery County [Md.] Public Schools, was walking through New York City’s Central Park when the idea hit him.

“I was actually walking with another Harvard grad, Brian Osborne, and I was talking about the Seven Keys,” he says, referring to an approach that the county is known for, which uses data to highlight a path to college persistence. Osborne, Ed.M.’01, Ed.D.’11, is superintendent of schools in South Orange-Maplewood, N.J. “I thought, wait a second. We’ve got to do this for kids who’ve dropped out. We actually don’t know what’s happened with them. Montgomery County has always been organized around the experience of successful kids. I was thinking, what about the opposite? I want to understand what the experience is of our kids at the youngest grades and the kids who are most vulnerable.”

For more, please click At Risk.