Strategies

Match disadvantaged or at-risk youth with volunteer mentors in school or community settings

Establish publicly financed schools that are not subject to many of the regulations that govern traditional public schools, such as staffing, curriculum, and budgeting requirements.

Implement a coordinated effort to overhaul school operation, integrating curriculum, instruction, professional development, parent involvement, classroom and school management; also called school-wide or whole school reform

Provide pregnant or parenting teens with services based upon their needs (e.g., counseling, connections to health care or social services, academic support, etc.) in school or community settings

Delay school start times for middle and high schools to better align with adolescent sleep-wake cycles; often until after 8:30 or 9:00 a.m.

Create a school culture of high behavioral and academic expectations, with intense tutoring, increased teacher performance feedback, lengthened instruction time, and health care services

Provide reproductive health care services such as counseling, contraception, and testing in middle and high school-based health centers

Help students process trauma exposure and develop coping skills through individual or small group counseling with mental health professionals or school staff with trauma-specific training

Reduce the number of students in elementary school classrooms

Support school-, community-, and clinic-based teen pregnancy prevention programs such as comprehensive sex education, HIV/STI prevention and youth development efforts, service learning, etc.