In desperate times, a fledgling foundation measures up

You know what they say about desperate times — and with 1.2 million students dropping out of school each year, these are clearly desperate times.

The Mattie C. Stewart Foundation specializes in desperate measures.

In a country in which high school dropouts make up a vast majority of the nation's prisoners, the foundation has focused its effort on helping students understand the potential consequences of dropping out of school.

From a bus that moves from school to school to give students the opportunity to tour a full-scale replica prison cell to a documentary in which prison inmates beg students to avoid the mistakes they made — first and foremost by staying in school — the four-year-old foundation is making a name for itself as it explores innovative methods of reducing this nation's troubling dropout rate.

Can children be "scared straight" into staying in school? It's likely that some can. But there may be just as much power in exposing adults to the foundation's programs — as a reminder of the consequences of our actions (and especially our inaction) when it comes to battling the dropout epidemic.

InsideOut from The Mattie C. Stewart Foundation on Vimeo.