Schools Turn Potential Dropouts into 'Star' Students

Angel McAnulty fell behind two grades in elementary school. Even though she did just enough work to skate by, she didn’t see the point of going to school.

She became stuck in eighth grade at age 15 — the age when most kids are freshmen in high school. After her grandma and two cousins died unexpectedly, she re-evaluated what she was doing with her life and decided to change her ways.

"I just thought, 'You know, while I’m here, I really need to do my best.'"

An adviser at her middle school told her about a course that would get her back on track. She signed up for a Star Academy Program in Easley, S.C., where her new teachers spent one-on-one time with her and taught her how to work with other students as a team.

She no longer said she had to go to school; she said she wanted to go to school. She worked hard to make up eighth and ninth grade in one year and now is planning to graduate in two years. If she had stayed on her original path, she might not have graduated at all.

Many students flounder through the public education system, and some of them ultimately check out without graduating. The Star Academy Program tries to catch these students before they drop out and give them a reason to stay in school.

This also gives them greater chances of entering the workforce since employers want workers with high school diplomas. The Star Academy Program provides students with options for their future, and it's helping fill a workforce gap for employers who are having trouble finding high school graduates.

Second chances

The students who enter the Star Academy Program should be in high school, but because they failed one or two grades, they never passed eighth grade, said Matt Frankenbery, director of education for Pitsco Education, the company that designed the program. Many of them could drop out when they hit 17, the legal age that South Carolina stops requiring students to go to school.

The program takes these teens and accelerates them from their current skill level to 10th grade course work in one academic year, which means they can re-enroll in traditional high schools as sophomores the next year.   

“In essence, the goal is to re-engage the students,” Frankenbery said, “get them back in touch and move them toward the path of graduation so they don’t age out of the system, and then just become a statistic.”

Star Academy re-engages students by giving them computer-based curriculum and hands-on, interactive projects. The teens from different district schools go to various education institutions — usually high schools, middle schools and alternative education centers — that host the Star Academy Program. They work at their own pace in classes of 10 to 20 students with separate teachers, bell schedules and lunch times.