The Boston compact: A community response to school dropouts

The transition from school to work is difficult for many American inner city youth. In 1982, Boston's leaders signed an agreement known as the Boston Compact to tackle the student dropout and employment problems. This paper reviews the process of the Compact from 1982 to 1986, traces the steps being taken to create a communitywide plan that responds to Boston's school dropout problem, and summarizes Boston's Draft Dropout Prevention and Reentry Plan.This paper was presented at the symposium, Dropping Out in America: A New Way of Looking at The High School Dropout Problem, American Educational Research Association Meeting, San Francisco, April 20, 1986.