Charity's New Strategist Works to Cut Dropout Rates

By Nicole Lewis

Carmita P. Vaughan has worked for a Fortune 500 company and the Chicago Public Schools, earned her master's degree in business administration, and traveled to Africa to study foreign investment opportunities. Now she has joined America's Promise Alliance, in Washington, as its chief strategy officer — a new position — where she will lead the group's efforts to reduce the country's high-school dropout rates. Despite her range of experiences, Ms. Vaughan is not all that far removed from high school herself: Observers might be surprised to learn she celebrated her 32nd birthday in March.

"I get that reaction a lot," she says.

However, it's no surprise to Ms. Vaughan that she's now trying to help students who could fall through the cracks at school because of poverty, lack of adult support, or other issues. She could have been one of them.

Raised in a Birmingham, Ala., housing project by a single mother, Ms. Vaughan says she was "one of those children a lot of folks had written off." Her mother, however, had a different idea. Ms. Vaughan recalls her mother's disappointment in the laxness of her local kindergarten, and the two of them taking the bus downtown to complain to members of the board of education.

"She not only forced me to study later on, but she advocated for me," says Ms. Vaughan. "There should be higher expectations. A lot of children have the same level of capacity but for whatever reason lack that advocacy, or are resigned to a situation where expectations are not so high, and are not exposed to a high level of instruction and therefore won't achieve."

America's Promise Alliance, a nonprofit group that mobilizes a network of charities, elected officials, foundations, and corporations to solve problems that impede the education of young people, is taking on a daunting problem. Only 70 percent of American students earn their high-school diplomas on schedule, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, in Washington. Barely half of Hispanic and black students earn diplomas with their peers, according to the organization.

To draw attention to the issue, last year America's Promise Alliance started a series of meetings led by governors, mayors, and school superintendents in all 50 states. Ms. Vaughan's charge is to oversee the remainder of the meetings and devise follow-up strategies.

Leaders of America's Promise, which also strives to give youths access to health care and positive adult influences, felt the dropout issue deserved a special focus.

"Half the youth of color are not finishing high school — this is a national catastrophe," says Marguerite W. Kondracke, president of America's Promise, which has a $15-million annual budget. "It's not only sad that a young person misses out on his own potential, but our country is missing out on a high-quality work force."

Ms. Kondracke says the group pursued Ms. Vaughan for the job after getting to know her at one of the group's dropout-prevention meetings in Chicago. "Her blend of private-sector skills and public-sector experience is unique," says Ms. Kondracke. "She will help us really ensure that we have a sharp focus and truly measurable results."

Ms. Vaughan declined to state her salary in her new job.

While her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering doesn't obviously point to a career helping children achieve more in school, Ms. Vaughan says she has always been interested in education.

In her first job, at Procter & Gamble, in Albany, Ga., she expanded a program in which young black engineers at the company could serve as tutors and mentors to students, many of whom were black, at a local high school that served disadvantaged youths. "I wanted them to serve as examples of what success could look like," says Ms. Vaughan.

In an interview, she talked about taking that message across the country in her new job.

How will your experience in the Chicago public schools help in your new job?

Two things are most transferable. First, I spearheaded a performance-pay-for-teachers program. It allowed me to see what it takes to drive that kind of change management within a city like Chicago and gives me a unique perspective coming into the work of America's Promise, which is driven by alliances and partnerships in cities and states that can drive full-scale reform. I also led the strategic-planning efforts to address the dismal graduation rates in Chicago. Our goal was to improve rates from 52 percent to 70 percent in five years.

How were you planning to achieve that goal?

In partnership with the [Bill & Melinda] Gates Foundation, we did a rigorous analysis and situation assessments that told us who the dropouts are and why we are losing them. We looked for predictive measures back in middle school. What sort of behavior and indicators were there that these students were becoming disengaged? How early can we identify them and what school structures can we put in place to help them? Deciding not to come to school doesn't happen in one day. It's a slow disengagement that happens over time.

How did you develop a way to collect data on students?

We partnered with the University of Chicago to build a central system for tracking freshmen throughout the city. If students are on track that year, they are 80 percent more likely to go on to graduation. We provided schools with a "watch list" every five weeks on how their freshman students were performing academically, how many absences they had, and other metrics. We then recommended specific interventions that would help them succeed in school.

Would you hope to expand the system for tracking students nationwide?

We often take for granted that data exists but if it doesn't, it puts the onus on individual teachers and schools to track students' progress in many areas, including test scores and behavior. I applaud Arne Duncan [U.S. education secretary and former Chicago Public Schools superintendent] and his team. Part of what they laid out in the president's education plan was a challenge to states to develop those systems.

Have graduation results improved in Chicago?

We have seen steady increases during Arne's tenure: We've gone from roughly 49 percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2008. But that sort of improvement is not good enough, as Arne constantly reminded us. We are really looking for an opportunity to drive not incremental improvement but a real transformation in the lives of these students. In the last one and a half years, we have focused on the entrée into high school and we have seen a drastic improvement in freshman attendance and core-course grades, which are leading indicators of overall success. So the next few years will tell if those things will result in drastic improvement in graduation rates.

How will you help America's Promise improve graduation rates nationwide?

We are not charged with going into each area and coming up with their plan. Our work is in highlighting this as an issue and putting our smorgasbord of partners in front of states as resources to access and people available to help. Our biggest asset is that we as an entity can help catalyze this work by bringing folks together.

What's the biggest challenge to success?

There is no single answer; there isn't one thing that ensures children won't drop out of school. That's why we need many different partners to rally round the table. If we focus on identifying students early, meeting their social and emotional needs, partnering with organizations that can help educational outcomes and provide support so that for every student there are caring adults who are invested in their success, we can drastically change the outcomes for these students. We know we can do something about this if we focus on it.