EDUCATION - Reinventing Summer School Part-2

"Year-Round School Commits to Students from Middle School to Last Day of College" (Series Part-2) PBS Newshour 8/21/2012

Excerpt

SUMMARY: Rainier Scholars, a Seattle non-profit, is trying to curb high school drop out rates. Taking the long-term approach, they identify students with high barriers to higher education and ask them -- some as young as 10 -- to commit not just to finishing high school, but to graduating from college. Hari Sreenivasan reports.

GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Now the second in a pair of stories about efforts to keep students from losing ground over the summer.

Last night, we looked at a Rhode Island school district's attempts to close the achievement gap between rich and poor.

Tonight, we head across the country to Seattle. A nonprofit group there runs a year-round program which aims even higher: to college graduation.

Our report is part of our American Graduate series, and we turn again to Hari Sreenivasan.

HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): As summer draws to close in a Seattle, roughly 50,000 K-12 students across the city are ending vacations and preparing to head back into classrooms.