Blogs
Here’s why multiple layers of support are vital for at-risk student success
Event Date: Sarah was just a few months away from graduation. She was also in crisis. She had already dropped out once before, shortly before the birth of her son. We’d gotten her reengaged, but a terrifying incident with her boyfriend had left her homeless; living in an emergency domestic abuse shelter two counties away from her […]
Read MoreWhy 3 a.m. “dots” are so important to us.
Event Date: Imagine a map of the United States, lit up with little dots everywhere a Graduation Alliance student is actively working on one of his or her online classes. If you looked at the map on most days, you’d notice that between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., a lot of students are engaged […]
Read MoreTwenty Minutes….
Event Date: Twenty minutes. That’s how long it took to determine that an incoming freshman named Ben was experiencing multiple “leading indicators” that suggested he would need additional support to graduate. Twenty more minutes. That’s how long it took to get him started on our ScholarCentric curriculum, which helps address these issues. Seriously. That’s all it took […]
Read MoreHow is ScholarCentric different from what you may be doing in your school today?
Event Date: As we travel across the nation, working with school leaders to give students more pathways to graduation, career training and college, one thing has become very clear: There aren’t many districts left that don’t already have multiple initiatives for helping students succeed. We’ve yet to meet a single administrator, though, who thinks they’ve got the […]
Read MoreAre social-emotional indicators being “hidden behind Spring fever”? Here’s how to find out.
Event Date: Spring can be a difficult time for students. Summer is close — but just not close enough. Often students are feeling worn thin. This is the time of year in which student disengagement can get hard to see, because it can get hidden behind a lot of other things. Recent absences can be chalked up […]
Read MoreWhat’s the purpose of education? That’s not as simple a question as it seems.
Event Date: You might be surprised by how many education leaders have a hard time answering what seems to be a very basic question about what they do: What’s the goal of education? The reason, of course, is not because they don’t know what education is, but because education is not a single-focus endeavor. As educators, we’re […]
Read More‘It’s hard’ but working together, we can help students develop vital life skills
Event Date: How do you teach vital life skills like developing purpose, making goals, staying motivated in the face of adversity, self-efficacy, and social connectedness? That’s a question we recently put to Dr. Scott Solberg, a professor of counseling psychology and applied human development at Boston University, and Graduation Alliance’s resident expert on social-emotional learning. In short, […]
Read MoreGoal-setting is hard for many students, but it couldn’t be more important.
Event Date: Jonathan didn’t know how to set goals. That might seem strange to some folks — goal-setting is just a matter of picking something you want and going after it, right? But educators understand that, for many young people, attaching an objective to the steps needed to achieve that objective is as foreign as another language. But […]
Read MoreHow to know a student will drop out — three years ahead
Event Date: Jessica was a straight-A student. She always attended school. Her behavior was excellent. But we knew she was at risk of dropping out. We knew before her teachers knew. We knew before her parents knew. We even knew before Jessica knew. How? Because Jessica’s school district had collected some vital pieces of information from all […]
Read MoreTwo reliable tips for early identification of at-risk students
Event Date: Wow. The response to our campaign to share some easy-to-monitor indicators for potentially at-risk students is going far better than we could have expected. Across the country, educators have been asking for our new tip sheet, and engaging with us about their ideas for how to better “see” potentially at-risk students before they’re even at-risk […]
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