A November 2011 report by Civic Enterprises and The Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University represents the first national assessment of early warning indicator and intervention systems (EWS) at the school district, state, and national levels. The report, On Track for Success, states its intention to share evidence from the latest research and best practices from the field “so that parents, educators, administrators, business leaders, and legislators can be better equipped to keep children on track to graduate high school, prepared for college and career success.” According the report, one in four U.S. students fail to graduate on time and recent research reveals that warning signs of dropping out are apparent long before the student decides to leave school. Research also shows that most at-risk students could graduate with early appropriate and sustained support. The use of EWS can help educators to gather and use data to identify and appropriately intervene with those students who are falling behind.
The report states that, over the past decade, researchers have identified three factors – low attendance, behavior infractions, and poor course performance – as better predictors of student success than demographics or test scores. According to the report, 12 states collect daily attendance data, 18 states collect discipline data daily, and 11 states collect both. Sixteen states produce early warning reports and, of those, only four distribute them to educators on a weekly or daily basis. A November 1 Education Week article online quoted one of the report’s authors as stating that many school districts and states “are awash in data” and “the big problem has been using that data in a way that’s useful.”
A copy of On Track for Success may be downloaded at www.civicenterprises.net.
PCG Education provides Web-based data systems and professional consulting services to assist state and local education agencies to collect, manage, and analyze student data and to produce meaningful reports to support goals for improving high school graduation rates.
