Society today is becoming increasingly information and technology-based. This shift is reflected in the workplace, where recruits are expected to be well prepared to meet the demands of the 21 st Century. The globalization of today's economy implies that individuals have to compete globally for jobs ( Conley, 2010; Venezi & Jaeger, 2013; Strickland , 2019 ). This phenomenon has put the education systems across the world in the spotlight. These systems are compared using graduation rates and standardized test scores. For individuals to successfully compete in this era, they have to graduate from high school ( Freeman & Simonsen, 2015 ; Vaughn et al., 2020). They must also transition and have the skills necessary to pursue post-secondary education to completion. The need for transition is based on the premise that post-secondary education is crucial for success in today’s competitive world ( Conley, 2010; Venezi & Jaeger, 2013; Strickland , 2019 ). Due to less-than-ideal high school experiences, high school graduation rates in the U.S continue to drop ( Pearson, 2015) . Consequently, there is a low rate of transition into college. The Building Attitudes Respectfully (BAR) program is aimed at addressing this challenge. In this paper, an evaluation plan for the BAR program is presented.
Description of the Evaluation Plan
To successfully evaluate the BAR program, it is important for dropping out of high school to be viewed as a process. It is also important to note that high school students are often transitioning both emotionally and physically. The students are often caught between being adults and children ( Stearns & Glennie, 2006 ; Strickland , 2019 ). High school students are also faced with the challenge of trying to find themselves. These choices are likely to affect their academic performance and progress toward graduation. A high percentage of high school dropouts begin sending distress signals as early as in sixth grade (Neild et al., 2007; Strickland , 2019 ). These signals are unsatisfactory behavior, inconsistent attendance, and poor grades and should be interpreted as the students' initial decisions about their studies as they progress towards graduation ( Vaughn et al., 2020). Based on this, the BAR program should begin at the beginning of junior high school and continue to senior high school. The program will be evaluated continuously at the end of every year to track progress and make changes where need be.
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Targeted at both high school juniors and seniors, the BAR program is based on the premise that students at these stages have an increased risk of dropping out of school or having a negative attitude towards attending college. The program will help the students in understanding the importance of transitioning to college. It will achieve this by putting necessary measures to ensure that these learners can obtain the grades needed to join college. To achieve this, the program proposes several vital tactics. These include hiring graduation coaches; engaging and partnering with parents; cultivating student-teacher relationships; making learning relevance; and advocating for student-centered funding. Each of these five tactics will be examined in the process of evaluating the BAR program.
Tactic 1: Hiring Graduation Coaches
Graduation coaches will be evaluated based on their ability to identify high school students that are at risk and help these students to gain a high school diploma and transition to college. They will also be evaluated based on their success at identifying the students with behavioral, social, and academic issues that may act as barriers to their academic success. Another important factor is their ability to develop strong bonds with the students and help them change their attitudes towards college, discover their potential, and appreciate academic excellence. To succeed in their role, the coaches have to build personal relationships with the at-risk students and their families. By creating a relationship with a student and at least one of the student's caring parents, a graduation coach establishes a framework of support for the student in question (Becker & Luthar, 2002; Heppen et al., 2018; Strickland, 2019). Such a framework sets the stage for the student’s successful coaching. Thus, the nature and strength of this framework will also be evaluated.
Several checkpoints will be used in evaluating the success of graduation coaches. The first checkpoint is the targeted students' connectedness with the school. Graduation coaches are meant to make at-risk students feel important while keeping them on track till they graduate. Graduation coaches enhance their students’ connectedness with their schools by developing a genuine interest in them and their academic life ( Angus & Hughes, 2017; Heppen et al., 2018; Strickland, 2019) . This, in turn, makes the learning environment inspiring, thus promoting academic excellence. It also leads to increased student engagement ( Greene et al., 2015). The graduation coaches can enhance this connectedness by allowing students to share the personal issues that may hinder academic performance and addressing these issues (Happel, 2006; Meeker et al., 2008; Heppen et al., 2018 ). The milestones to be used concerning students' connectedness include the strength of relationships established between students and their graduation coaches; whether students feel accepted in school or not; and whether or not the learning environment inspires students.
The second checkpoint is the students’ school attendance. This checkpoint is based on the premise that the students' feelings of disconnectedness and isolation are likely to result in poor school attendance and vice versa ( Strickland, 2019). For the at-risk students to excel, they have to attend school consistently. Therefore, the milestones to be used for this checkpoint include the number of days students miss school, how far back students lag behind their peers and their disposition towards school. The third checkpoint will be the students’ behavior.
Disruptive behavior is indicative of students’ negative dispositions towards their school and vice versa ( Meeker et al., 2008; Angus & Hughes, 2017; Strickland, 2019). The milestones in this regard will include students' propensity towards being disruptive, attitudes towards school, and whether they make attempts to overcome or confront difficulties. For the graduation coaches to succeed in their mandate, they have to be consistent and persistent (de Leeuw et al., 2020). They also have to build supportive and trusting relationships with the student. Lastly, their efforts have to be well structured.
Tactic 2: Engaging and Partnering with Parents
Parents' engagement in their children's academic affairs plays a vital role in ensuring that these children excel and successfully transition to college. The BAR program will be evaluated based on whether parents pay close attention to their children’s academic schedules, courses, and progress towards high school graduation. Parents' engagement in their children's academics promotes the latter's emotional and social development ( Mistry et al., 2010; Powell et al. , 2010 ; Mac Iver et al., 2015; Lasater, 2016 ; Povey et al., 2016 ). The engagement is also likely to improve the students’ school attendance and retention.
The BAR program will also be evaluated based on whether parents partner with their children’s schools. There is a consensus that children’s optimal academic performance is only possible when schools and parents form collaborative and respective partnerships and work towards the common goal of ensuring that the children excel academically ( Fox & Olsen, 2014; Goodall & Montgomery, 2014 ; Hargrave , 2015 ; Mac Iver et al., 2015; Lasater, 2016 ; Auger & Jeffrey, 2017). The BAR program is premised on recognizing that the agency for children's academic excellence belongs to their parents but supported by the schools. The partnership between parents and schools enhances the former's capacity to implement effective supportive strategies at home. Parents are also more likely to improve engagement with their children's schooling at home when there is a high expectation for them to do the same from the schools ( Toldson & Lemmons, 2013; Whitaker & Hoover-Dempsey, 2013 ; Lasater, 2016 ). Thus, the strength of these partnerships will be evaluated.
The checkpoints to be used in evaluating engagement and partnership with parents include the nature of activities, attitudes, values, and behaviors exhibited by both the parents and schools to support the students' ability to learn and excel academically. Possible milestones from the parents' perspective include frequency of reading together, talking about interests and school activities with their children, conveying high educational expectations, and volunteering in school activities. Others include the number of strong supportive social networks established between parents and schools, the nature of the relationship between parents and school staff, and the parents' understanding of school norms. A notable milestone from the schools' perspective is the number of training sessions conducted to educate the parents on the school curriculum's critical aspects.
Tactic 3: Cultivating Student-Teacher Relationships
Advisories are essential in the quest to increase students' transition to college. In this regard, the BAR program will be evaluated based on the number of small groups of at-risk students created for the provision of guidance by an appointed member of the faculty. Besides meeting the students regularly, these faculty members are expected to offer structured ways of ensuring that students can grow and thrive academically. Student-teacher relationships can either be positive or negative. The former helps students excel academically ( Hargrave , 2015 ; Grant, 2016 ). On the other hand, the latter creates problems that reduce the students' performance. The BAR program will thus be evaluated based on its success in creating the former.
Possible checkpoints for this BAR tactic include the level of teachers’ support, the teachers’ behavior towards their students, and the students’ attitudes towards the faculty members assigned to them. Ultimately, supportive student-teacher relationships set students towards a path of academic excellence ( Hargrave , 2015 ) . This is because positive interactions with teachers determine the students’ perception of their ability to succeed. They also affect the students’ academic self-concept. In particular, such interactions encourage students to increase their academic engagement leading to their success. Some key milestones in this regard include students' behavior, students' responsiveness, and academic adjustment.
Tactic 4: Making Learning Relevance
Boredom and disengagement are notable indicators of students’ likelihood of dropping out of school (Rush, 2017; Strickland, 2019). The BAR program is aimed at preventing this by connecting students with the communities around them. It will thus be evaluated based on its ability to create this connection. This tactic seeks to give academics a deeper meaning to help students develop positive attitudes towards their studies. By making learning relevant, the BAR program will ensure that education is personally meaningful to the students. This way, the students will be motivated to put effort into their studies, thus increasing chances of graduation and subsequent transition to college.
The proposed checkpoints for this tactic include the number of platforms created to connect students to the communities, students’ behavior towards learning, and their attitudes towards learning materials. There are numerous milestones in this regard. These include the students' choice of activities to engage in while in school; enthusiasm while choosing courses; clarity and conviction in pursuing careers of choice; attention to the learning process, the effort put in learning; and whether or not they are persistent. Another milestone includes the students' motivation to engage with academic content.
Tactic 5: Advocating for Student-centered Funding
The BAR program seeks to ensure that high school funding aligns with the needs of schools and students. This will be based on the demographics of both students and schools. Notable strategies include directing more funding to schools with more challenging populations ( Freeman & Simonsen, 2015) . This would address such challenges as overcrowded classrooms, incompetent and inexperienced teachers, and the shortage of vital school equipment and facilities. At the core of this tactic is the need to ensure that schools' financial resources are directed towards where they are likely to make the most impact ( Freeman & Simonsen, 2015). Thus, besides focusing on the schools' overall funding, the program will be evaluated based on whether allocation of funds matches learners' needs.
The checkpoints for this tactic will include the efficiency of the mechanisms used to allocate funding, availability of alternative and diversified funding sources, mechanisms put in place to manage the available resources, and presence or absence of budgetary adjustments while having the schools' funding needs in mind. Possible milestones include whether or not the funding mechanisms put in place meet the schools' equity and quality objectives, provide all students with equitable learning opportunities, and support high-quality teaching. Others include the presence or absence of for-profit and other fundraising initiatives; reduction of unnecessary expenditure; and re-routing the available monies to the most critical areas.
Ultimately, the BAR program aims to ensure a 100% transition rate of students from junior high school to senior high school, and finally to college. Thus, the program will be evaluated in the context of this goal. The program's success will be measured based on the number of students who transition to college against the total number of students who seat for the final senior high school exam. Any issues or problems that may arise while implementing the program will be considered valuable feedback. Thus, these issues will be addressed and strategies devised to strengthen the program. This will ensure that all high students have all they need to transition to college.
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