Congreso de Latinos Unidos has partnered with Edison High School on the Éxito™ initiative since 2008-09 with the goal of reducing the school’s high dropout rate and increasing graduation rates. The program has received support from a variety of funders in its five-year history, including Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services (DHS), The Pew Charitable Trusts, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Philadelphia Youth Network, United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, and the Comcast Corporation.
Since the Éxito program’s inception in 2008, Research for Action (RFA) has followed its development, tracking the outcomes of Éxito’s first two cohorts of students. In previous years, the first two cohorts were active participants in the program. In Year Three, Cohort 1 was no longer eligible, as juniors, to participate while Cohort 2 students, as sophomores, were still eligible to participate. In this report, we examine student outcomes in Year Three for all students who entered 9th grade in 2008 (Cohort 1) or 2009 (Cohort 2) and participated in Éxito at any point during their freshmen and/or sophomore years.