Increasing Graduation Rates for Students with Disabilities: Success Stories from West Virginia

Abstract

In 2010, the National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD) partnered with the West Virginia Department of Education Office of Special Programs to provide intensive technical assistance to 12 school districts to help them design and implement evidence-based programs to increase the graduation rates of students with disabilities. In this article, we describe the initiative and interventions implemented in five districts that successfully decreased dropout and increased graduation among students with disabilities. We provide graduation data from the 2008-2009 school year along with graduation data from 2012-2013 to demonstrate the gains made in these rural school districts. All names of districts and schools have been changed.

Keywords

dropout prevention school completion students with disabilities rural schools

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