A second factor highly correlated with dropouts is the pre-EMS academic performance. Given the strict promotion criteria, it is not surprising that pre-EMS low achievement levels—in primary or lower secondary—is one of the most important predictors of upper secondary dropout rates. For instance, using a longitudinal data set following students between 6<sup>th</sup> and 12<sup>th</sup> grades, de Hoyos, Estrada, and Vargas (2018) show that an improvement of one standard deviation in test scores at the end of 6<sup>th</sup> grade increases the probability of on-time high school graduation by 10 percentage points.

Overall, low achievement levels, particularly in math, are one of the most important challenges in EMS. <mark>According to the results of PLANEA, a standardized test applied to those finishing EMS in 2017, 66.1% of the students in 12</mark><sup>th</sup> <mark>grade had an “insufficient” achievement level, 23.3% obtained “regular”, 8% of all graduates had a “good” achievement level and only 2.5% achieved an “excellent” level. EMS students display not only low basic cognitive skills, but the evidence suggests that they have low levels of</mark> socio-emotional skills. According to the data from the socioemotional module of PLANEA 2016, 20% of students declared feeling stressed very often and 28% felt they cannot control important issues of their lives.

# **2.3 The PODER Pilot Program**

With the objective of reducing EMS dropout rates, SEP, together with the World Bank and two local universities, designed the pilot program “Programa de Oportunidades y Desarrollo para Evitar Riesgos (PODER)”. The design of the program acknowledges that reducing upper secondary dropouts is a complex task involving remedial actions to close skills gaps that, in many cases, have been accumulating since infancy.

The program assumes that youth at risk of dropping out are those with significant skills gaps in two areas, math and socio-emotional skills, and therefore applies remedial actions to try to reduce those gaps. Through a CBT-based workshop and math tutoring, PODER aims to improve students’ socio-emotional and math skills, respectively, hence reducing their probability of dropping out. The specific approach undertaken in our project is based most heavily on two previous papers: Blattman, Jamison, & Sheridan (2017) and Heller et al. (2017). Both develop a version of cognitive-behavioral therapy, which is one of the most evidence-based treatments in psychology and adapt it to vulnerable but non-clinical populations of young men – the former in Liberia, the latter in inner-city Chicago. Both show remarkable successes – the former for anti-social behavior and violence, the latter for crime and school enrollment. We diverge from them in terms of including mixed genders and especially in terms of using non-specialist counselors to lead the group sessions: volunteer teachers who are briefly trained in CBT techniques and the chosen curriculum, as opposed to carefully selected staff whose sole job and expertise revolves around psychological interventions for personal development.

PODER was designed between January and July 2016 and targets at-risk first year EMS students in public schools run by the federal government located in CDMX. Like BAM, student participation in PODER is voluntary, does not bear any consequences for the students’ academic progress and it is implemented outside school hours. As opposed to BAM, PODER’s CBT-based sessions and math tutoring are implemented entirely by school teachers whose participation is 7