Skip to content. Check and Connect

Located at the Institute on Community Integration, a University Affiliated Program on Developmental Disabilities

College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota

Funded by the Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of Education

In the News

The following Web sites and/or news items highlight the Check & Connect model:

County helps School District of Lancaster combat truancy (December 2011)
"A program designed to help students with attendance problems stay in school is coming to School District of Lancaster. SDL is partnering with Lancaster County Children & Youth Services to implement the Truancy Prevention Program at district middle schools beginning in January."

York County [PA] Truancy Program Expanding (August 2011)
"A York County program that pairs mentors with students struggling with truancy is expanding to Hannah Penn Middle School."
(Related article: York County Program Against Truancy Expands)

Check and Connect: Social Worker Clicks with Kids, Parents (March 2, 2011)
"Skip school at Clinton Middle School, and Charity Clark is probably going to come knocking on your front door. But she doesn't wear a badge. Through the Check and Connect truancy diversion program, Clark builds trust and establishes ongoing relationships with at-risk students and their families."

Program connects students to school: Check and Connect designed to prevent kids from dropping out (November 3, 2010)
"An intervention program aimed at promoting student engagement and retention is beginning this year in nine school districts across Southwest Colorado, including Durango, Ignacio and Bayfield. The program, called Check and Connect, targets students who are at risk of dropping out and pairs them with trained mentors."
In related news, this article from the Durango Herald (August 12, 2011) mentions how Montezuma/Cortez schools utilize Americorps volunteers as Check & Connect mentors.

Boys & Girls Club Program Supports Struggling Students: Goal is to keep them focused on graduation (October 18, 2010)
"Be Great: Graduate is modeled after Check and Connect -- a comprehensive strategy designed by the University of Minnesota. Both programs stress use of mentors; intense tracking of school attendance, behavior and course failure; partnerships among club, home and school; and communication."

Solving the Mental Health Crisis for Our Children (May 6, 2010)
Huffington Post article by Rosalynn Carter.

PDF Knowledge Is Power: Toward a Quebec-Wide Effort to Increase Student Retention: Report of the Action Group on Student Retention and Success in Quebec (2010)
"Concerned by the scope of Quebec’s student retention problem, members of Quebec civil society formed an action group made up of representatives of organizations that work in dropout-related fields, relevant government departments, business people and experts whose work is connected to the issue." This group examined existing dropout prevention initiatives both within Quebec and outsite of Quebec, including Check & Connect.

Staying on Track for High School Graduation: Promoting Student Engagement (2009)
This article from The Prevention Researcher, by Karen Stout and Sandy Christenson, describes the history of school dropout, predictors of dropout, student engagement as the critical factor, and research about promoting school completion, with Check and Connect as an example of a research-based prevention program.

Quarter of NZ Students Quit Early (September 10, 2009)
This article from Stuff.Co.NZ describes New Zealand's high school graduation rates, which are the second-worst in the developed world, and quotes Sandra Christenson, one of the creators of Check & Connect, who recently presented at an education conference in New Zealand.

U of M's "Check & Connect" program tackles problem of school dropouts: New grant will expand program to include community college students in Minneapolis and Kentucky (March 31, 2009)
From the University of Minnesota's UMNews Service: "The U of M’s Institute on Community Integration (ICI) in the College of Education and Human Development has been successfully combating the [dropout] problem in K-12 education in Minnesota and around the country with its targeted 'Check & Connect' program. Now, a new research project at ICI has begun work to expand the Check & Connect model into postsecondary education for use with students ages 18-30 who are at risk of dropping out of community college."

Making the Connection: ICI Aims to Keep Students in College (March 2009)
From a project profile in the Institute on Community Integration's fyi Staff Newsletter: "Aiming to improve college graduation rates, on March 1, the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) and the University’s Department of Educational Psychology launched 'Making the Connection: Engaging and Retaining Young Adults in Postsecondary Education,' a two-year research project funded by a $727,237 grant from the Institute for Education Sciences (IES). Making the Connection will study the feasibility of adapting Check & Connect – a K-12 school engagement intervention developed at ICI – to community college settings with students ages 18-30."

Keeping Kids in Class: Check & Connect demonstrably lowers dropout rates (Spring 2009)
A write-up from the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development describes how "The groundbreaking Check & Connect model is evolving to address postsecondary persistence."

Staying the course: Our city has a wealth of Culture, knowledge, history, dropouts. For Montreal to recognize its potential, it has to find a way for students to recognize theirs (February 14, 2009)
This article from The Montreal Gazette describes several dropout prevention programs currently being implemented in Montreal, among them an adaptation of Check & Connect.

Keeping Students Engaged With School: ICI’s Check & Connect (December 2008)
From an intervention profile in the Institute on Community Integration's fyi Staff Newsletter: "Each year roughly 1.23 million students in the U.S. do not graduate from high school with their peers. Students who leave school before graduation are more likely to become unemployed, incarcerated, and/or dependent on social programs than those with a high school diploma. The Institute on Community Integration (ICI) is responding to this problem by offering Check & Connect, a comprehensive, targeted intervention designed to enhance students’ engagement at school and with learning through relationship building and problem solving."

PDF IES Practice Guide: Dropout Prevention (September 2008) (PDF)
Geared toward educators, administrators, and policymakers, this guide provides recommendations that focus on reducing high school dropout rates. Strategies presented include identifying and advocating for at-risk students, implementing programs to improve behavior and social skills, and keeping students engaged in the school environment.

Engaging Students with School: The Essential Dimension of Dropout Prevention Programs (January 22, 2008)
In this National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities Webseminar, Dr. Sandy Christenson described universal and individualized interventions for students with and without disabilities. Viewing engagement as comprised of four subtypes, she explained the ideal heuristic to achieve an assessment-to-intervention link, as well as data-based interventions that maximize the goodness of the person/environment fit. Additionally, Dr. Christenson discussed effective interventions for students at risk of educational failure with a focus not only on attendance and academic skills, but also on indicators of students’ commitment to learning, perceptions of academic and social competence, and the sense of belonging by educators and parents.

PDF Investments in K-12 Education for Minnesota: What Works? (November 12, 2007) (PDF)
Henry M. Levin, a professor at Columbia University, and Clive R. Belfield, an assistant professor at Queens College, examined the public costs of a high school dropout on Minnesota taxpayers, then looked at the cost of programs that boost high school graduation rates. Voila: a positive cost-benefit ratio for several programs, including Check & Connect. Levin and Belfield presented this report at an education summit sponsored by Growth and Justice, a Minnesota think tank that focuses on the state’s economy.

PDF Approaches to Dropout Prevention: Heeding Early Warning Signs with Appropriate Interventions (October 2007) (PDF)
This report by the National High School Center, at the American Institutes for Research, outlines steps that high schools can take to identify at-risk students and identifies specific dropout prevention programs that have strong research showing positive or potentially positive effects, including Check & Connect, Achievement for Latinos through Academic Success (ALAS), and Career Academies.

[Southwest Minneapolis] Schools Notebook: Graduation rates up in 2007 (September 24, 2007)
"Minneapolis Public Schools reported a significant increase in the number of high school seniors who earned a diploma last year. . . . [Superintendent] Bernadeia Johnson pointed to the district's Check & Connect program as one factor in the higher graduation rates."

Keeping Kids in School: What Research Tells Us About Preventing Dropouts (April 5, 2007)
This Web page from the Center for Public Education, an initiative of the National School Boards Association and the National School Boards Foundation, describes several dropout prevention programs/initiatives, including Check & Connect.

Resources from “Preventing High School Dropout” Webinar (December 13, 2006)
The National High School Center hosted a Webinar on Dropout Prevention, “Preventing High School Dropout: Understanding the Underlying Issues and Useful Strategies to Address the Problem,” on December 13, 2006. It addressed research in the field and highlighted state implementation strategies for preventing students from dropping out. Featured presenters included Russell Rumberger, University of California, Santa Barbara, Professor and Director of Linguistic Minority Research Institute; Cammy Lehr, Coordinator of the Dropout Prevention, Retention, and Graduation Initiative at the Minnesota Department of Education; and Glory Kibbel, Interim Director of Choice and Equity for the School Choice Programs and Services Division, Minnesota Department of Education.

Intervention Report: Check & Connect (September 21, 2006)
The U.S. Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) publishes Intervention and Topic Reports that reflect a wide range of our nation's most pressing issues in education. The Check & Connect model is the topic of this Intervention Report. See also comparison table of all dropout prevention models reviewed by the WWC. The WWC prioritizes topics based on the following criteria: 1) potential to improve important student outcomes; 2) applicability to a broad range of students or to particularly important subpopulations; 3) policy relevance and perceived demand within the education community; and 4) likely availability of scientific studies.

Social Programs That Work: Check and Connect (Dropout prevention program for high school students with learning, emotional, and/or behavioral disabilities) (no date)
The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy seeks to address the issue that U.S. social programs (in areas such as education, crime and substance abuse, and poverty reduction) are often implemented with little regard to rigorous evidence, costing billions of dollars yet failing to address critical needs of our society. It works to provide policymakers and practitioners with clear, actionable information on what works, as demonstrated in scientifically-valid studies, that they can use to improve the lives of the people they serve. They have included Check & Connect as a program where "Randomized controlled trials show a sizable decrease in students' dropout rates, and increase in attendance and academic credits earned."

Strenthening the Safety Net: How Schools Can Help Youth with Emotional and Behavioral Needs Complete Their High School Education and Prepare for Life After School (no date)
This guide from the School Research Office at the University of Vermont describes research-based strategies to educate students with emotional/behavioral problems by maximizing resources already present in communities, including Check & Connect. Projects are briefly described in the executive summary and also described in detail on individual pages.