Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Law Students Blogs -> Urban Law Journal

Law Students

: Urban Law Journal

Education Reform -- Gateway to College launches in Philadelphia (Part 2 of 3)

By 3L at Seton Hall University School of Law and Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

Part II of the Inquirer's look at Philadelphia's efforts to remediate its high drop out rate delves into the causes behind students dropping out of the Gateway program. The program launched with two classes of twenty students:

Of the original 20, only 13 remained.

One student was arrested. Another took ill. One young man decided he wanted to try trade school. One young woman found out she was pregnant with her second child and needed to work. For some, family turmoil got in the way.

Those who were left were trying to juggle course work that was getting more and more taxing with the demands of their complicated lives. Most were poor. Some were skirting volatile family situations; what started out as support could be snuffed with one argument. Others had jobs they couldn't - or felt they couldn't - give up.

The piece also explores why these students dropped out of school in the first place, and the resolve that some show to continue with the program despite mounting pressures to return full time to the workforce.

Full post as published by Urban Law Journal on June 05, 2008 (boomark / email).