At Risk Students

The At-Risk Student Committee of the Education and Economic Development Act Coordinating Council conducted extensive research and worked collaboratively with the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson University for five months to identify "exemplary" and "promising" evidence-based models, initiatives, and programs from which districts and schools may choose to target at-risk characteristics among school populations and meet the needs of students at risk of dropping out of school or being poorly prepared to move to the next level of education or the workforce.

Over 40 models, initiatives, and programs were identified. The Committee, working with the Department of Education's staff, developed a regulation to support the implementation of this particular component of the legislation beginning with the 2007-2008 school year. The regulation provides districts and schools with implementation-related content and significant flexibility to recommend additional evidence-based models, initiatives, and programs for implementation.

The Department of Education has also developed an implementation guide that contains the proposed models, initiatives, and programs. The also guide provides a matrix of model-, initiative-, and program-specific content for each of the 40 models, initiatives, and programs.

The At Risk student provision is found in Section 59-59-150 of the EEDA.

The At-Risk committee is chaired by Valerie Richardson, Workforce Development Manager for Palmetto Health. The Department of Education's liaison to the At-Risk Committee is Dr. John Lane.

Along with the five other committees working under the Coordinating Council, the At Risk Committee provides updates on their work at the Council meetings and when provided as powerpoint files, these reports are posted on this site at the Powerpoints link.