Blogs
Sick children shouldn’t have to suffer twice-over
Event Date: Know a student in your school like this? Kat certainly didn’t want to be missing school. But after frequent visits to the doctor and lots of medical tests — almost all of which caused her to miss classes or entire days of school — she had been diagnosed with a health condition that required even […]
Read MoreA single-course setback didn’t push this student off-track
Event Date: Does this sound familiar? Danielle wasn’t “at-risk.” Not in the way most people currently think, at least. She was an A and B student, an athlete, and a member of student government. But in her junior year, she ran into a single subject that — for whatever reason — stopped her in her tracks. “Chemistry […]
Read MoreWhy every state needs to adopt a high school diploma program for adults
Event Date: More than 80 years after she left school to help her mother raise her siblings, a Michigan woman has been awarded her high school diploma. That’s the sort of feel-good story everybody loves. When 98-year-old Ruth Frezza finally received her diploma, after all, it was in a symbolic ceremony in a nursing home. And what […]
Read MoreHow to stop the heartbreaking cycle of intergenerational poverty
Event Date: Three years have past since Chico Harlan’s heartbreaking series in The Washington Post “A Region Left Behind” laid bare the crushing truth of poverty in the Deep South. In places like Drew, Mississippi, the chances of climbing out of poverty aren’t good — even for students who do manage to earn a high school diploma. […]
Read MoreMoving forward: An example of the power of resiliency
Event Date: There isn’t a school district in the United States that isn’t doing something to serve students who need more than standard instruction. “There are trained special educators for students whose disabilities get in the way of their learning,” the editors of EdWeek noted Teaching Vulnerable Students “There are special programs for English-language learners, gifted-education services […]
Read MoreExpectations meet reality with Graduation Alliance’s pay-as-you-go services
Event Date: Shortly after the beginning of this school year, we were at an education conference in Southern California, where an administrator from a mid-sized school district was sharing a common lament. “We don’t have any choice but to base what we offer this year on what we needed last year,” she said. “But we ended up […]
Read MoreTracking students who appear to have dropped out is vital
Event Date: Over the past decade, state legislatures looking for “easy wins” in the fight to keep students in school have passed compulsory attendance laws that have essentially made dropping out illegal. Few states, however, have provided schools with the resources they need to enforce these laws. In particular, most communities do not have the capacity to […]
Read MoreEducation’s digital revolution: It was never just about ‘digitalness’
Event Date: “So when do I get my username and password?” That’s a common question for new students in Graduation Alliance programs. And it’s an important one. In the world of digital education, usernames and passwords are the keys that unlock the school building. And while keys are unquestionably important, they don’t matter much if there’s nothing […]
Read MoreAs the New Year begins, we look back at what we’ve accomplished in 2018
Event Date: This New Year, we’re taking stock of what we’ve done over the past 12 months — and feeling proud of what we’ve accomplished including the celebration of 1,890 graduates! In districts across the United States, we continued our dropout recovery partnerships, and started a lot of new ones, too — giving thousands of young people […]
Read MoreNon-cognitive skills development should be an intentional outcome of our education system
Event Date: This year marks the 30th anniversary of political economist Andrew Weiss’ seminal paper demonstrating that the relationship between high school graduation and earnings can be explained by non-cognitive factors — such as a lower propensity to quit — rather than the simple accumulation of knowledge. Twenty years after that revelation, Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman […]
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