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Complete a survey based on the Back on Track model to better understand how your program/school maps to the three phases and what may be needed to improve your students’ graduation rates and college readiness.

Texas's Rio Grande Valley is home to a groundbreaking model for dropout recovery (based on the Back on Track Through College model) that helps youth transition into college. The College, Career, and Technology Academy has graduated almost 1,000 former dropouts and off-track youth in five years — a significant percentage of whom attained postsecondary credits before graduating — putting college success within reach for students who once left school without a diploma or were at high risk of not graduating. This approach is being replicated across the Southwest, as other school districts recognize the promise and potential of recovering this population and helping them achieve their postsecondary and career goals.

This paper highlights the Postsecondary Success Initiative, launched in 2008 as a collaboration of Jobs for the Future (JFF), YouthBuild USA, the National Youth Employment Coalition, and as of 2011, the Corps Network with generous support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.

The Rudy Lozano Leadership Academy of Chicago requires all students to complete a graduation check-list and a senior portfolio. This tool contains sample graduation check-list requirements and an outline of requirements for the senior portfolio.

Despite growing interest in student-centered approaches to learning, educators have few places to turn for a comprehensive account of key components of this emerging field. Students at the Center aims to build the knowledge base for these innovative approaches that beat the odds for underserved students, and improve learning and achievement. This project includes 9 papers and additional resources on student-centered learning.

This tool is designed to help assess key steps schools and programs can take to start to embed college readiness skills into their daily activities and identify next steps for improvement.

This tool is designed to inform the planning and building of support infrastructures for students transitioning to postsecondary institutions from second chance systems.

This toolkit consists of two tools: one that provides an overview of principles for practice in ensuring good attendance, and another that offers a self-assessment for schools on a full range of attendance strategies.

This toolkit provides examples of how Rudy Lozano Academy, a campus of Youth Connection Charter School, has structured its combined graduation portfolio to incorporate postsecondary exploration, preparation, and application. This example provides a basis from which to customize a list of graduation requirements that go beyond course credits and assessments and to design a portfolio process that conveys high expectations for college readiness.

The intake process at College Career and Technology Academy in Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District, Texas starts when an enrolling student arrives and ends when he or she is attending classes and his or her enrollment paperwork is complete. This tool describes their intake process. An accompanying tool offers a self-assessment for schools on how they would like to utilize their intake process to accomplish a range of goals.

This tool assists community based organizations and their partner postsecondary institutions to assess the overall strength of their partnership and explore how they can work together to help students in Back on Track diploma- and GED-granting programs get ready for college and receive ongoing structured help with the transition and in their first year of enrollment.

This tool enables your school/program assess their recruitment strategies for off-track and out-of-school youth.

This tool provides a platform for discussion about making data an essential part of practice.

This tool includes strategies for supporting high school students dual-enrolled in college courses, and the conditions required for implementation. Review the strategies and conditions to determine next steps to implementation.

This tool includes key features of a college skills for success course, an overview of these courses in four postsecondary institutions, and a matrix that staff can use to design or enhance their college skills for success course.

Bringing Off-Track Youth in the Center of High School Reform provides a "starter kit" for school districts seeking to introduce a systemic approach to dropout prevention and recovery. This tool kit supports the efforts of a school district and its partners to create a system of back-on-track options for off-track and out-of-school youth. It focuses on key decision points in identifying young people who are falling off track and on creating high-quality learning environments to help them reengage and graduate college-ready.

This resource, initially developed for the Texas Dropout Recovery Program Pilot grantees, lists Texas policies that support dropout recovery, as well as sustaining alternative education programs, and asks targeted questions that help to build a framework for using policies to benefit dropout recovery programs. Use the questions to review policies in your state. Non-Texans can use the policies and questions to review the policies that support recovery programs in your state.

Pharr-San Juan-Alamo partnered with South Texas College to create the College, Career, and Technology Academy (CCTA), a college-connected dropout recovery school that puts former dropouts onto a supported path to postsecondary education.

The College Prep Academy operated jointly by Capital IDEA and Austin Community College in Texas provides an accelerated program to assist underprepared adult learners wishing to satisfy the Texas Success Initiative (TSI) requirements in order to enter college and earn a degree or certificate.

This publication describes successful practices and program models that serve off-track and out-of-school youth, gathered from leading practitioners in New York City.

The purpose of this report by David T. Conley is to provide an operational definition of college readiness that differs from current representations of this concept primarily in its scope. This report is relevant to the Back on Track Postsecondary Bridging work and provides a good foundation for developing strategies for bridging.

This brief describes a number of finance-related policies that states can use to support the development of education options that serve struggling students and disconnected youth.