Why Early Warning Systems Matter and Where

They Are Going NextRobert Balfanz

Everyone Graduates CenterJohns Hopkins University

March 11, 2014

Our Nation Faces a Graduation Challenge • There is little work for young adults without a

high school degree• And no work to support a family without some

post-secondary schooling or training• As a result entire communities are being cut

off from participation in American society and a shot at the American Dream • This weakens the Nation

Dropping Out of High School Means You Are Much More Likely • To be out of the labor market as full time

employed• To be incarcerated• To have health issues and at an earlier age • To pass on these set of disadvantages to your

children• As a result, dropping out has high individual

and community costs

This Presents our Schools and Communities with a Big Challenge

• Every student regardless of needs, prior levels of school success, and current motivations needs to graduate from high school prepared to succeed in post-secondary school and training

In Era When All Students Need to Graduate Prepared for College and Career

• The best teachers and the best curriculum are not enough• Students also need to attend school regularly,

focus in class, and complete their assignments• Poverty complicates this and the challenges are

significant• Schools can and need to be organized to help

enable students to attend, behave, and try

Early Warning Systems keep students on the path to high school graduation and improve school outcomes

• Signals when students are just beginning to fall off the path to high school graduation• Helps get the right intervention to the right

student at the right time• Enables schools to maximize impact of critical

resources-time and funding• Shows which students need stronger adult

relationships• Enables adults to pool their knowledge, talents

and time to change student behavior and solve problems

What Will the Next Generation of Early Warning Systems Look Like?Summary Findings from Early Adopters of Early Warning Systems Conference Held at Bush Institute Nov. 2013

Good News: Schools and Districts Across the Country are Adapting Early Warning Systems to Work in Their Community • By building a response system matched to the scale and

scope of their challenges • In schools with 20 or fewer students with off-track

indicators individual counselors, social workers, or graduation coaches have led the effort

• In schools with 20 and 50 students small dedicated teams of staff members - e.g. student support teams have been successful

• When more than 50 students are involved teacher teams will need to play a critical role

• In all cases investments in mission building, professional development, coaching and networking have been critical to success

Good News: Dropout Prevention and College and Career Readiness Can Be Propelled by a Unified System of Predictive Indicators and Tiered Evidence Based Interventions • Consistent Finding that no matter how you look

at it or at what grade - the ABC’s - Attendance, Behavior, and Course Performance - are predictive of student success• Students who attend school regularly,

behave/try/self-mange, and do well in their courses graduate from high school and succeed in college• Students who do not, dropout or do not succeed

in college

Good News: The ABC’s are Actionable• Attendance, behavior, and course

performance can be modified and improved through organized and informed actions at the school, district, and community level• This provides a coherent message to schools

and students-drive up good attendance, behavior and course performance, pay attention to and prevent/intervene when low attendance, problematic behavior, and poor course performance occur

Good News: Grades 5 to 14 Can be Viewed as an Ecosystem• Early adolescence to early adulthood is a

distinct phase of life• To build pathways from poverty to adult

success we need to get all students through this stretch• Pre-k to 4th grade “on track” metrics are

important but they may or may not be the same as–early adolescence to early adulthood metrics–we do not know yet–except that attendance always matters

Good News: We Know the Key Inflection Points• Students who are good at school by 9th grade by

and large succeed, those that struggle and do not earn promotion to 10th grade by and large do not• Most but not all students 9th grade trajectories

are set in the middle grades• Chronic absenteeism in the early grades sets

students up to fall off-track in the middle grades• To pivot from high school to adult success many

students need help navigating the grade 10 through the initial years of college space

Challenges: Behavior Domain is Complex• We are just starting to identify the behavior

signals that indicate students are on and off track to adult success• Hence its an area both ripe for innovation and

for making mistakes• But there does seem to be value added in

bringing in more expanded and closer to real time behavior data

Two Sixth Graders

Challenges: Indicators Can Identify Too Many Needy Kids in One Place• Once a student has an off-track indicator

reversing course will require either changing student behavior and/or solving a problem• Both of these require an effective relationship

between an adult and the student

Solution• Need to get to place where early warning

indicators are used to direct evidence based prevention activities and resource allocation at the school, district, and state level

Challenges: Need to Gain Broad Acceptance of the Validity of Indicators• Solution – Need to convince more people that

attendance and grades matter as much as test scores for student success

In sum, what we face is a giant engineering challenge of creating

schools designed to enable all students to graduate prepared

for college and career and within them getting the right support to

the right students at the right time at the scale and intensity

required.

The Good News is we are, as folks in this room are showing, good at engineering challenges

For more information• Visit the Everyone Graduates Center website at www.every1graduates.org

• E-mail Robert Balfanz at rbalfanz@jhu.edu