September 9, 2025
Michael T.S. Wotorson, National Program Director, Schott Foundation for Public Education
Transforming the nature of public education so that it maximally serves all students is in everyone’s best interest. Of course, our best opportunity to achieve that transformation occurs when we intentionally center the desires, aspirations, and concerns of parents and community in the instructional and organizational decisions we make as public school leaders. Ultimately, this work is about cultivating key national partners to grow the national movement for student success.
The GRAD Partnership, of which the Schott Foundation is a proud member, offers a framework for advancing four foundational elements of student success: development of strong, supportive relationships, use of real-time, actionable, holistic data, implementation of strategic improvement actions, and commitment to student-centered mindsets. Recently, two members of the Schott Foundation’s Opportunity to Learn Network hosted community town halls to engage communities in discussion about challenges and opportunities for scaling student success systems.
Education Justice Alliance (EJA)
EJA, a North Carolina-based nonprofit, is committed to dismantling the school-to-prison and school-to-deportation pipelines, eliminate the criminalization of Black, Brown, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities and secure educational equity for all students in the public school system. EJA envisions a relationship-centered public school system that values parents and students as decisional actors and active agents of change – a key element for effective student success systems. EJA pulled together members of the local east Raleigh community for an important discussion about public education in general and student success systems in particular. Held on the same day that EJA hosted a back-to-school rally, the town hall was attended by a cross-section of parents and students, and several non-English speaking community residents. The 90-minute discussion yielded important insights as well as some key confirmations about the importance of student success systems as an evidence-based strategy for promoting student achievement and education justice.
OneVoiceMS
OneVoice Mississippi is a Jackson Mississippi-based nonprofit dedicated to ensuring an equal voice for traditionally silenced and marginalized communities. OneVoice envisions a Mississippi that has healthy and vibrant neighborhoods, schools, a strong economy and thriving families. By focusing on leadership, civic engagement, public safety, education, and economic justice, OneVoice has remained at the forefront of progressive chang in Mississippi. OneVoice organized a community town hall in collaboration with School of Education at Jackson State University, and invited members of the Jackson community for a focused conversation on justice, public education, and student success with special emphasis on the needs of students in special education.
Important Takeaways
Changing Demographics Matter
Just as student and community populations are constantly growing, so too do the needs of students and their families. It is important, therefore, that schools and districts pay close attention to demographic change in order to shape curriculum, supports, interventions, and connection strategies that ultimately serve student needs. Ignoring demographic realities when molding programmatic strategies will ultimately make relations between school and community exclusionary and ineffective. To help avoid these pitfalls, communities, schools and districts can intentionally build relationships that foster trust and open communication, and elevate student voice to foster mindsets that promote student success. Communities like east Raleigh, with a growing population of non-English speakers, are increasingly finding ways to work with school and district leaders to be increasingly responsive to the needs of increasingly diverse populations and the students who come from those communities. EJA is intentionally responsive to that growing diversity, and serves as a shining model for school and district leaders implementing student success systems. In fact, the EJA community conversation emphasized the importance of centering student voice in decisions and strategic adjustments and priority setting for schools and districts.
Partnering with High Education Institutions Yields Results
Partnerships between higher education institutions and K-12-focused nonprofit organizations offer wonderful opportunities for collaboration around accessing and utilizing actionable data and research support for strategic interventions. Ultimately, these partnerships can lead to stronger educational quality, and student success through co-developed student support programs, policy analysis, and community engagement strategies. The Jackson State University School of Education strives to be a key partner with the communities surrounding the university. This authentic connectedness is crucial for instituting effective student success systems approach in schools and districts. Ultimately, this is how we can work together to build a sustainable ecosystem for student success across local communities and districts.
Effectively implementing student success systems requires the promotion of deep collaboration across school districts alongside communities, and families. Moreover, this requires an intentional placement of student voice at the forefront of the planning, implementation, and decision-making. The Schott Foundation is proud to support the GRAD Partnership as it works with partners in communities around the country to achieve these important goals. Thank you to the leadership of EJA and OneVoiceMS for elevating important community-informed perspectives to advance the movement for student success systems.