Margins to Mainstream

The high school dropout rate among FSU immigrants has increased since their arrival in the 1990’s, and now stands at 42% - over four times the national average for native Israelis!

Matriculation exams begin already in tenth grade and get progressively harder. FSU students are challenged by the matriculation process and Hebrew language as much or more than by the academic material.

The answer is Margins to Mainstream, a multi-year, school and family intervention project to prevent high school dropout from ninth through twelfth grades. IAIC transforms school’s facilities into Russian-speaking support centers, providing after-school enrichment and tutoring to students, and professional counseling and assistance to parents in collaboration with local social workers.

Present participants include 100 students from grades 9 to 12. Most originate from the Caucasus region and are characterized as "at-risk" by the school and by community services. A Brookdale Institute study reported that 40% lacked social contact with non-immigrant Israelis, and 25% lacked social contact outside their families altogether.

A Learning Center offers supplemental tutoring and assistance with daily schoolwork and with matriculation materials. Since the majority of students come from low-income families, IAIC provides social and community activities. Communal participation and leadership activities include student gardening and concerts for retirement homes, and other activities which schools cannot afford, but which translate into critical success factors in a student’s self-esteem and growth. Group facilitators, teachers and a Russian-speaking educational counselor work at the school with the students and their parents..

The impact after 2 years of operation is that almost all have passed their matriculation exams to date, attendance, participation and behavior have dramatically improved and participants are integrating better into their community by joining sports clubs and other extra-curricular programming.

Two-year goals are:

• to raise the matriculation rates of FSU students in participating schools by 50%

• to develop a model program to be replicated in many locales with large immigrant populations

• to integrate this program into the national master plan of the Ministry of Education.