TUESDAY NIGHTS AT 7 P.M. ON WGBH2

Beginning March 3, and airing every Tuesday for six weeks, WGBH’s Greater Boston examines how the Massachusetts dropout rate affects everyone in the commonwealth, from the students and their families to state citizens and their communities. Emily Rooney is the host of Greater Boston. Linda Polach is the executive producer.

March 3: Host Emily Rooney profiles 16-year-old Maggie, a student at Lawrence’s High School Learning Center, who discusses the challenges of academic engagement as a pregnant teen. 

March 10: Jared Bowen profiles a onetime dropout who now encourages young people to stay in school. 

March 18: Each day 40,000 Massachusetts students use public transportation to get to school which is why MBTA stations can be a haven for kids who decide not to go to class. In this report, Greater Boston host Emily Rooney tags along with members of Operation StopWatch, a collaborative effort of the MBTA, the Boston Police Department, the Boston Public Schools, and other agencies, that reaches out to teens to understand why they are not in school.

March 31: The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exams became a graduation requirement in 2003. The Massachusetts Department of Education says students who fail the MCAS are 11 times more likely drop out of high school. Critics of the controversial exams say the test an unfair graduation requirement. This Greater Boston report looks at whether the MCAS exams contribute to the dropout rate.

March 24: With the national unemployment rate at over 8%, the recession is helping the four branches of the US military exceed their recruitment figures, as a result high school dropouts are facing more competition when pursuing what many have considered a fallback career.  This Greater Boston report looks at what it now takes to get in shape academically for a military career.

April 3: JAMN 94.5’s Ramiro Torres’ parents both dropped out of high school but he decided to complete his high school diploma. Alexandria King’s parents graduated from both high school and college, but she dropped out two weeks before graduation. This Greater Boston report brings together two people who decided to take different paths in life.

April 7: Job Corps is a federally funded residential program that teaches job skills to young people while encouraging them to finish their high school education. In this Greater Boston report, Jared Bowen looks at what has proven to be an effective solution to the dropout problem.

ABOUT GREATER BOSTON

Greater Boston, WGBH’s nightly local program, examines the region’s top news and newsmakers. Hosted by Emily Rooney, Greater Boston combines feature reports and in–studio interviews, providing a fresh approach to and in-depth analysis of timely news, politics and public affairs issues of local interest. A team of contributors provides commentary on topics ranging from breaking news to community concerns, politics to media, education to the environment. The week ends with Friday’s Beat the Press, a lively discussion of what the media covered that week, and why.

ABOUT WGBH

WGBH Boston is America’s preeminent public broadcaster, producing such celebrated national PBS series as Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, Frontline, Nova, American Experience, Arthur, Curious George and more than a dozen other award-winning primetime, lifestyle and children’s series. Boston’s last remaining independent TV station, WGBH produces local TV productions (among them, Greater Boston, Basic Black and María Hinojosa: One-on-One) that focus on the region’s diverse community. For its efforts, WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors, including Oscars, Emmys, Peabodys and duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards.