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Study shows correlation between summer jobs and high school graduation

Flickr User Anthony Albright
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A new University of Michigan study finds Detroit students who participated in a youth employment program had a higher attendance rate in school two years later. Researchers compared teens who got summer jobs through one youth works program... with their peers who didn’t. Researchers found the working students were more likely to take the SAT and graduate from high school.

 

University of Michigan education policy professor Brian Jacob says the program may have given students useful workplace connections or role models… which helped motivate them.

 

“Well I think it probably has to do has something to do with improving their kind of engagement with school. Giving them a sense that education could lead to a good employment outcome if they stuck with it.”

 

Jacob says students with below average test scores who had jobs were even more engaged with school than the higher scoring students in the program.