Dive Brief:
- The Obama administration is planning to launch the My Brother's Keeper Success Mentors Initiative, a 10-city program combating absenteeism by pairing mentors with students three times per week.
- Administration officials cited an estimated 7.5 million children at risk of dropping out because they miss a month or more of school annually.
- The 10 cities set to participate in the program include Austin, Boston, Columbus, Denver, Miami-Dade, New York City, Philadelphia, Providence, San Antonio, and Seattle.
Dive Insight:
In conjunction with the new mentoring program, an educational campaign targeting the parents of K-8 students is also being unrolled. It will include large billboards, public service announcements, and a website designed by the Ad Council.
The White House announcement comes at nearly the same time that California Attorney General Kamala Harris has announced a state initiative to combat elementary school truancy and absenteeism. That initiative also involves public outreach by the Ad Council to tackle what her office calls a "truancy crisis."
But instead of a far-reaching mentoring program, Harris has released a free, online toolkit aimed at spreading information about the negative consequences of chronic absence and truancy on students. Over 200,000 California elementary school students were reportedly chronically absent in the 2014-15 school year.
