Introduction
An ‘at-risk’ student is a young person at risk, or educationally disadvantaged, if they have been exposed to inadequate or inappropriate educational experiences in the family, school, or community. Many of these students are located in large, mainly urban high schools around the country (Balfanz, 2007). Urban high schools face five common problems: low student engagement, poor prior preparation, low ninth-grade promotion rate, low graduations rates, and isolation from the community (Herlihy & Kemple, 2004). When at-risk students are exposed to such environment everyday, they have a greater probability of dropping out of school (Princiotta & Ryan, 2009) Nationally, 1.3 million members of the public high school class of 2009 failed to graduate with a diploma with the majority of that population being African American, Latino, and Native American (Princiotta & Ryan, 2009). The majority of these populations attend schools in urban high schools in majority cities (Balfanz, 2007). Many schools do not have a system that identifies students who are at-risk of dropping out school, so these students are ignored. And even some schools that have indicators in place, they do not offer adequate assistance to help these students (Princiotta & Ryan, 2009). In urban high schools, difficulty transitioning from middle school to high school can increase dropout rates and reduce on-time graduation (Princiotta & Ryan, 2009). Recent studies show that most ninth graders that enter nonselective urban high schools enter with academic skills that are several years below grade level, and that students that dropped out had severe academic problems in the ninth grade (Kemple et al, 2005). Therefore it is very important to establish drop out prevention during the critical time. The Talent Development High School is a reform model was created to address the needs of