The Graduate Greater Louisville High School

Dropout Solutions Summit 

was held on July 30, 2008

at Bellarmine University 

Background

Since 2004, Louisville has been designated as one of America’s Promise’s “100 Best Communities for Young People.” In early 2008, Louisville was awarded a grant from America’s Promise to hold a summit and craft a plan to help Louisville improve high school graduation rates over the next few years.

This is something that has been on Mayor Abramson’s mind since Louisville’s city and county governments merged in 2003. A study by the Brookings Institution – “Beyond Merger: A competitive Vision for the Regional City of Louisville” – showed that the Louisville region needed to improve educational attainment at all levels, including at the high school level, to move up in comparison to our competitive cities. The goal of improving educational attainment was incorporated in the Greater Louisville Project goals and has since been tracked on a yearly basis.

Summit Planning

Getting Organized:

• The summit was planned as part of a larger existing community goal to increase educational attainment.  Partners interested in furthering this goal were at the table early-on.  The community saw dropout solutions not as a new initiative, but as part of a larger overall strategy the community had already embraced.
• The initial brainstorming meeting to plan the summit was open to anyone interested in the topic.  As a result, we had early buy-in from a number of partners. 
• Committees were formed and began work prior to the summit.  Their task was to identify best practices, look at data, identify existing efforts and to propose emerging recommendation to present at the summit.
• We asked Kentucky Youth Advocates (the non-profit organization that gathers data for Kids Count) to prepare and present the data portion of the summit. They also provided ethnographers for each working track and are to publish "Proceedings" of the summit.

  Building Knowledge:

• This website became the repository for information about the summit, resources, studies and articles we discovered as we researched topics, and data items and sources.  The site also listed meeting dates and times.
• Understanding the scope of the dropout issue was our first challenge.  A Data Committee delved into the various sources and tried to reconcile discrepancies in data.
• The Youth Voice Committee made a concerted effort to "hear the voices" of young people.  They worked with a researcher to survey and hold focus groups with 300 youngsters, and published their findings for the summit in Youth Voice, Louisville's Young People Speak Out on their Experiences in School.
• The Parent Voice Committee worked with the Annie E. Casey Foundation to hold a listening session with parent serving organizations.  The notes from that session are posted on the website.

Identifying Solutions:

• Prior to the summit, the four committees planning the summit's working tracks recommended several "emerging recommendations" to put forth the day of the summit.
• Summit registrants, as they registered on-line, were asked to identify the working track they wished to participate in the day of the summit. 
• The day of the summit, more than 400 participants divided into working groups or "working tracks" to discuss the issues in each area, hear possible solutions (these were the emerging recommendations), propose other options, and finally prioritize responses for the action plan that would result from the summit.
• Following the summit, the committees worked with the ethnographers who participated in the summit tracks to fine-tune prioritized recommendations that will be used as the basis for next steps for the Action Plan.

Summit is part of a national effort

The America’s Promise Alliance chose Louisville as one of the first cities to hold an America’s Promise Dropout Leadership Summit. America’s Promise told us that they were not interested in merely supporting a series of one-day events around the country, but were keenly committed to supporting a nation-wide campaign to improve policy and practice so more young people graduate from high school ready for college, work and adult life. We have been asked to incorporate three America’s Promise agendas:

By 2010, America’s Promise aims to catalyze and support leadership summits on the high school dropout crisis with each of the 50 states, as well as with the 50 cities (including Louisville) that research shows have the greatest concentration of low-performing high schools.

Louisville’s High School Dropout Solutions Summit:

Louisville’s summit will focus on improving graduation rates among the city’s high school students. Many people are currently working to plan the summit. The work is divided among the following committees:

• Multiple Pathways/High School Innovation
• Student Supports
• Policy Barriers to Graduation
• Life Readiness and Education Beyond High School
• Youth Voice
• Parent Voice
• Data

The charge of the summit mirrors that of America’s Promise:

(1) build a sense of urgency around the issue,

(2) secure a commitment to action from leaders in all sectors, and

(3) craft a follow-up action plan to strengthen current efforts and initiate new strategic activity to reduce the number of young people who drop out.

For more information on Louisville’s Summit, please contact:
Lynn Howard
Louisville Metro Office of Policy and Management
527 West Jefferson, Suite 200
Louisville, Kentucky 40202
502 574-4349
lynn.howard@louisvilleky.gov