Professor Russell Rumberger, a Professor of Education at UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz School, delivered a featured presentation on dropout prevention as part of the Research, Policy, and Practice Conference (R2P 2014) hosted by the School District of Philadelphia and the Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic on April 8 in Philadelphia. Rumberger’s presentation highlights the second part of the conference, which targets researchers, educators, administrators, and other stakeholders.
Russ Rumberger is a Professor in the Department of Education. He currently directs the California Dropout Research Project, which is producing a series of reports and policy briefs about the dropout problem in California and a state policy agenda to improve California’s high school graduation rate. A faculty member at UCSB since 1987, Professor Rumberger has published widely in several areas of education: education and work; the schooling of disadvantaged students, particularly school dropouts and linguistic minority students; school effectiveness; and education policy. He has been conducting research on school dropouts for the past 30 years and has written over 40 research papers and essays on the topic. He served as a member of the National Research Council’s (NRC) Committee on Increasing High School Students’ Engagement and Motivation to Learn, which issued the highly regarded volume, Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students' Motivation to Learn (2003). He was a member on the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences panel that produced the Dropout Prevention Practice Guide (2008). He completed a book, Dropping Out: Why Students Drop Out of High School and What Can Be Done About It, published by Harvard University Press in the fall of 2011. He served as the Vice Provost for Education Partnerships, University of California Office of the President from 2010-2012.