Robert wholesale nba jerseys Balfanz and Elise Buik share their op/ed zu featured November 28, 2011 in the Los Angeles Business Journal.

L.A. employers take note: New California Education Department data show that 94,000 students in the class of 2010 dropped out of high school. Of them, 11,000 were from Los Angeles. Perhaps most disturbing is that the state was able Take to estimate that 17,000 additional students dropped out before cheap mlb jerseys excitement they even got to high school. These numbers should serve as an alarm bell system for L.A. companies, especially as recent studies warn that many California employers Model soon may be unable to find enough skilled Student workers to remain competitive.

If there’s any good news, it’s that we finally have the information needed to end the dropout crisis, thanks to the decade-long quest to get accurate measures of Park high wholesale nba jerseys school graduation rates combined with recent advances in developing early warning indicators for dropping out.

We now know exactly which high schools produce the majority of dropouts. We even know which students in those high schools and their feeder middle schools are signaling that they need help. This knowledge means we can mobilize resources wedding where they are most ?? needed while there is still time to do something about it.

And Los Angeles is positioned to be at the forefront of this effort. Los Angeles Unified wholesale nfl jerseys School District Superintendent John Deasey’s efforts to turn secondary schools into pipelines to postsecondary success, combined with Synthetic the power of local non-profits, foundations and corporations, have the power to transform the lives of 10,000 students a year, and 10,0000 over a decade. The United Way of Greater Los Angeles, for example, is at the cheap mlb jerseys cutting edge of a national United Way effort to cut the dropout rate in half by 2018.

LAUSD and the local United Way recently partnered with Diplomas Now, a Feisty proven approach that helps the toughest middle and high schools in America’s largest cities ensure that students graduate ready for college or careers.

Principal Joanne Carillo at John H. Liechty Middle School calls it a “magic bullet” that has contributed to turning around her school near downtown Los Angeles. Go Carillo credits Diplomas Now with helping to boost test scores and student attendance, wholesale nba jerseys wholesale nba jerseys quell fights and suspensions, and engage hundreds of low-income wholesale nfl jerseys parents. The secret, she said, is that Diplomas Now “makes the kids feel like everyday heroes. It wholesale mlb jerseys makes them feel wholesale jerseys they matter.”

Warning signs

Our research shows that a cheap mlb jerseys sixth-grader with even one of the following singt warning signs is 75 percent more likely to drop out of high school than his peers: poor attendance, failure in English or math, and poor behavior. Diplomas Now identifies such students early and works with the school to eliminate their By problems.

Diplomas Now unites three national non-profits: Johns Hopkins University’s Talent Development Secondary, 3 a school reform model that improves instruction and performance; City Year’s young-adult “near peers” who welcome students, call them if they don’t show up, provide tutoring, reward positive cheap mlb jerseys behavior, and involve students in service and enrichment programs; and Communities in Schools’ case managers who help the neediest students access community resources, such as counseling, health care, housing, food and clothing.

This is wholesale jerseys the third year Diplomas Now has operated at Liechty and Hollenbeck Middle School and its first year at William Jefferson Clinton Middle School in South Los Angeles. Last year, Diplomas Now won a major grant from the U.S. Department of Education to expand to more schools. And the United Way of Greater Los Angeles recently launched a campaign to bring the model to even more local schools.

That’s Principal Carillo’s wish: br?d cheap nba jerseys “If every school could cheap mlb jerseys have this, we would see a huge change,” She see s change schoolwide and in individual kids, such as sixth-grader Chris. Teachers and the Diplomas Now team met to determine why Chris was acting out at school and learned his father had recently been deported. His mom was struggling. The team made cheap nba jerseys sure Chris understood people cared about him, set expectations, and got him into counseling and a program to prevent kids from joining gangs. Chris used this direction to get back on track.

Gaudencio Marquez from ??? Communities in Schools and Blake Gilliam from City Year are among those who por keep kids from falling through the cracks. Last year, Gilliam, 23, tutored a dozen struggling English-as-a-Second-Language students, making her own flashcards, and NoName working with kids before, during and a after school. Marquez organized a wholesale jerseys reception for parents and students with the greatest challenges, the first time most of the kids had ever been honored. Today, at Liechty, “kids 17.06.2015 rush to get to their classrooms on time,” said Marquez. “They want to be there.”

The dropout crisis will not end cheap mlb jerseys without community involvement. Local businesses should join the movement to spread success to schools with great challenges. The alternative is adding thousands more young adults without futures to local unemployment rolls every year.

This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Business Journal (Subscription Required)