Effects of School of Life Foundation Intervention on Grade Advancement, Dropout and Attendance: A Descriptive Study

Across the country, schools face a multitude of challenges related to student discipline and school climate that potentially impact social and academic outcomes for students. Schools are continually changing and the demands that students face daily have increased at a rapid rate. When students are ill-equipped to face such demands, and traditional reactive approaches to discipline are employed, there is an increased likelihood that they will drop out, or will face punitive measures that do not ultimately improve behaviors (Morrissey et al., 2010). Choosing to dropout of high school may cause serious repercussions for students, their communities and families. Although many interventions currently used to decrease the number of dropouts do not have strong evidence to support their effectiveness (Freeman et al., 2015), several studies conducted in the past 20 years indicate that improved outcomes for students graduating high school have occurred through various interventions. School of Life (SOLF) is a intervention offered as an alternative to in school detention and suspensions. Although other dropout prevention programs have been evaluated, SOLF is a time and resource efficient method for targeting dropout and students who have participated in this intervention over the past three years have seen positive results, including higher rates of graduation (Baggaley, 2015). The purpose of the current study was to answer the following three research questions: 1. What is the effect of the SOLF on grade advancement/dropout rates? 2. What is the effect of SOLF on attendance? 3. What is the effect of SOLF on school connectedness and student motivation?