Projects & Initiatives
Current Projects & Initiatives
Check & Connect High School Completion Initiative
Minneapolis
Public Schools
Participants/Setting: Beginning with ninth graders from the 2006 graduating class of 2 Minneapolis high schools, students showing warning signs of withdrawal are targeted for interventions. Referral criteria include: absenteeism, academic failure, suspensions, and/or being new to the district. In the context of smaller learning communities, the schools integrated three complementary strategies: the Check & Connect model of engagement, the Attendance Liaison Program to make contact immediately following initial absences, and a School Attendance Review Board model to bring in community resources. To date, about one quarter of each cohort is served by these targeted interventions.
Project Period: Fall 2002 to present
Contact: Colleen Kaibel (kaibe001@umn.edu)
Project Engage—Promoting School Completion Through Data-Based Decision Making
Project Summary: Student engagement is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional construct that consists of external, low inferential indicators and internal, high inferential indicators of engagement. In addition, the concept of student strategizing—or, alignment of student goals with school goals—is critical for school completion. Engagement is not conceptualized as an attribute solely of the student. Rather, it is influenced by the context, particularly school (school climate, quality of instruction, teacher expectations) and family (academic and motivational home support for learning, expectations) practices.
External indicators of engagement include academic (sustained attention, accrual of credits, completion of academic work) and behavioral (attendance—tardies, absences, skips; suspensions; classroom participation, participation in extracurricular activities). Internal indicators of engagement include cognitive (processing academic information, thinking about how to learn, relevance of schoolwork to future endeavors) and psychological (identification with school, sense of belonging).
The goals of Project Engage are to:
- To use data diagnostically and prescriptively to inform and guide interventions that re-engage students at the first indication of disconnection from school;
- To efficiently and proactively match needs with resources in order to monitor and facilitate student engagement in each of its four hypothesized forms; and
- To use student engagement data to refine interventions that, in the short term, improve connection with school (e.g., reducing behaviors often responded to with suspensions, increasing attendance) and are sensitive to the alignment of student goals with school goals (student strategizing); yet in the long term promote school completion (as indicated by sufficient academic and social competence to ensure the availability of post-secondary enrollment options).
Project Engage staff are collaborating with Minneapolis Public schools to create an assessment-to-intervention link for students who are showing early signs of disengagement (attendance, academic performance, behavior, perception of support within the school environment, level of cognitive processing of academic tasks, level of intrinsic motivation to master subject areas) by:
- Developing a psychometrically sound instrument for measuring cognitive and psychological engagement. Data collection for ninth grade students occurred in fall 2004.
- Identifying interventions from the literature and instrument items for the purpose of facilitating student engagement. The literature review is underway.
- Creating an assessment-to-intervention link for students in grades K-12 who are showing signs of disengaging. This aspect will involve disseminating intervention information, designing and evaluating interventions, etc.
Project Period: Fall 2003-present
Contact: Sandra L. Christenson, Ph.D. (chris002@umn.edu)
Past Projects & Initiatives
Persistence Plus: Using Check & Connect to Improve Service Delivery and Positive Post-School Outcomes for Secondary Students with Serious Emotional Disturbance
Participants/Setting: Two cohorts of students with primary and secondary emotional or behavioral disabilities were targeted beginning in 9th grade. Students were initially enrolled in one of seven urban high schools in programs accessible to the general education curriculum. Students were followed over time as they moved to alternative programs, a separate special education building, charter schools, GED programs, and treatment or correctional settings. The entire population of eligible students was targeted for participation in the study, resulting in 92 treatment students and 79 control students.
Funding Agency: Office of Special Education Programs
Project Period: 1996-2001
Contact: Sandra L. Christenson, Ph.D. (chris002@umn.edu)
Dakota County School Success: Using Check & Connect as a Truancy Intervention
Participants/Setting: This initiative targeted chronically truant youth (ages 11-17) with and without disabilities across eight metro-area suburban/small city school districts. Students had been petitioned to court on a truancy violation.
Funding Agency: Dakota County Community Services, University of Minnesota
Project Period: 1996-2002
Dakota Elementary Referral: Truancy Prevention Using Check & Connect
Participants/Setting: This pilot targeted elementary school age youth with and without disabilities in three metro-area suburban school districts. These youth were referred primarily for a history of attendance-related issues, At least one of every four elementary Check & Connect students had been open to a county social worker. Nearly two-thirds of the students had siblings with a history of educational challenges, and the parents of many students have had negative school experiences. The majority of youth participating in the program struggled with multiple factors, both school and non-school related, which placed them at high risk for failure. Program capacity ranged between 70 and 260 active student cases.
Funding Agency: Dakota County Community Services, participating public school districts, University of Minnesota
Project Period: 1997-2001
Contact: Camilla Lehr, Ph.D.
Check & Connect: Middle School and Transition to High School
Participants/Setting: The purpose of this project was to develop and field-test a dropout prevention intervention for students with disabilities in middle school. Check & Connect was developed with two cohorts of students in urban middle school settings. Additionally, 94 students (from cohort two) with learning and emotional/behavioral disabilities received Check & Connect in grades 7 and 8. Half of these students were randomly assigned to continue receiving the intervention through grade 9.
Funding Agency: Office of Special Education Programs
Project Period: 1990-1995
Contact: Sandra L. Christenson, Ph.D. (chris002@umn.edu)
Early Prevention Applications of Check & Connect
Project ELSE—Early Literacy School Engagement
Participants/Setting: Fifty-two kindergartners from six elementary schools were identified as being at risk for reading difficulties. Schools were randomly assigned to be a treatment or control school. Children in the three treatment schools received Check & Connect with literacy support, while children in the three control schools received assessment and consultation about assessment results.
Funding Agency: Office of Special Education Programs
Project Period: 2000-2004
Contact: Tam E. O'Shaughnessy, Ph.D. (toshaugh@mail.sdsu.edu)
Early Risers Check & Connect Project (2001-2003)
Participants/Setting: One hundred thirty kindergarteners and first grade students from 16 urban schools were identified as at risk for school failure based on elevated scores on an aggression screening measure. Of these students, those identified as the poorest readers (n = 60) received Check & Connect; the 70 remaining students served as a comparison group. The "check" component consisted of using progress-monitoring procedures, and the "connect" component consisted of mentors building relationships with students and families. Mentors visited students at school weekly and encouraged families to participate in literacy activities at home and provided families with activities (e.g., shared book reading, vocabulary cards).
Project Period: 2001-2003
Contact: Sandra L. Christenson, Ph.D. (chris002@umn.edu) or Gerald August, Ph.D. (augus001@umn.edu)Check & Connect is located at the Institute on Community Integration, Minnesota's University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD) in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. Check & Connect has been funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs and Dakota County Community Services, Minnesota.
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