Well, I think I would attribute it to quite a bit of individual attention.  Our students are placed in samll groups and work with volunteer mentor-tutors.  The groups are maintained and supported by the professional staff; so this means that there's a web of supportive  relationships to help students with problems that may lead to"stop-out".  If a student is absent twice without calling in, we call to find out what's happening.  We try, too, to assist in overcoming the most typical barriers to education, so we have childcare  and a small shuttle bus that can do door-to-door service to 15 people, if they live within a couple miles of the school. To be honest, I've never been sure that our retention was good, because I've never had data to compare it with.  Does anyone know what a typical retention rate is for a non-intensive adult ESL program?

Kate Diggins
Director of Adult Education
Guadalupe Schools
(801) 531-6100 (x-1107)

>>> Andrea Wilder <andreawilder at comcast.net> 04/19/07 5:54 PM >>>

Kate--

How do you account for the long retention rate?  Other programs report 
this as a difficulty.

Thanks.

Andrea

On Apr 19, 2007, at 1:31 PM, Kate Diggins wrote:


> I'd like to respond to David Rosen's question regarding programs which 

> track student gains beyond the bounds of the fiscal year.  At my 

> program, students stay for an average of 15 months, and they are 

> permitted to stay for five years if they wish (and many of them do), 

> so we track them from start to finish.  We are a small program, 

> serving about 250 students a year, so we take a fairly low-tech 

> approach.  After pretesting with BEST "Plus" and BEST Literacy, we 

> plot their scores on line graphs (two separate graphs - one for each 

> of the two tests) and continue to plot their scores for each 

> subsequent test.  As time goes by, the lines representing a student's 

> progress slope gradually upward across the pages. This is a graphic 

> that the students can easily understand, and it enables us to see 

> which skill areas require emphasis for individual students.  Having a 

> complete picture of a student's testing history also allows us to show 

> students that an occasional disappointing test sco

>  re may be an aberration from a generally upward trend.

>

> Kate Diggins

> Director of Adult Education

> Guadalupe Schools

> (801) 531-6100 (x-1107)

> -------------------------------

> National Institute for Literacy

> Assessment mailing list

> Assessment at nifl.gov

> To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to 

> http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/assessment

>


-------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
Assessment mailing list
Assessment at nifl.gov
To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/assessment