Maine has been selected as one of 15 states to work with the US Department of Education and the National Dropout Prevention Network/Center on the Rural Dropout Prevention Project.
Through the project, Clemson University’s National Dropout Prevention Center/Network and Clemson Broadcast Productions, under a subcontract to Manhattan Strategy Group (MSG), will provide services to the US DOE to analyze and enhance rural dropout prevention efforts in 15 states. The project will focus on states with a high percentage of schools in rural and remote areas, including Maine, Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
The purpose of this work is to provide technical assistance to states and designated rural schools in designing and implementing programs and securing resources to implement effective school dropout prevention and reentry programs in rural communities. States’ dropout prevention needs will be analyzed and solutions and resources will be developed for state education departments and school districts.
The National Dropout Prevention Center/Network will support the project’s needs assessment process, help develop dropout prevention tools and products, and provide assistance to the states. Clemson Broadcast Productions will observe and film the dropout prevention work in each state and produce a series of 15 documentary videos to be used by the US DOE to train rural educators in all of the states.
Maine expects to begin this work at the end of April with eligible districts, though the resources developed will be available to all Maine schools when the project is completed.
For more information, please contact Maine DOE’s Jacinda Goodwin at jacinda.goodwin@maine.gov or 207-624-6637.