August 13, 2026

The GRAD Partnership’s Year Three Impact Results show that middle and high schools implementing student success systems continue to achieve substantial progress in reducing chronic absenteeism and course failure rates — two strong predictors of high school graduation and postsecondary success. Moreover, progress accelerates as schools sustain their efforts, particularly in schools facing the greatest absenteeism and course performance challenges.

• After one year: average chronic absenteeism declined from 31% to 28%, a 10% reduction; average course failure rates declined from 33% to 30%, a 9% reduction.
• After two years: average chronic absenteeism declined from 33% to 27%, an 18% reduction; average course failure rates declined from 35% to 27%, a 23% reduction.
• After three years: average chronic absenteeism declined from 50% to 40%, a 20% reduction; average course failure rates declined from 39% to 22%, a 44% reduction.

In ninth-grade classrooms, where early intervention is especially critical, the pattern of improvement was even more pronounced:

• The average ninth-grade course failure rate declined from 32% to 26% after one year, a 19% reduction, and from 38% to 28% after two years, a 26% reduction.
• Ninth-grade chronic absenteeism declined from 34% to 27% after two years.
• Among the small group of schools with three years of ninth-grade data, course failures fell 45%.

The report’s sharpest finding concerns the importance of effective implementation, with stronger results where the student success system model was implemented fully. Among over 100 school teams with first-year data, roughly three quarters put the entire system in place, and those teams cut chronic absenteeism by an average of five percentage points. The remaining quarter, which only achieved partial implementation, saw chronic absenteeism rise by an average of four points. This shows that partial adoption does not offer a slower path to the same result. The components are interdependent — data are only as useful as a team’s ability to act on the information, and those actions are only as durable as the relationships and mindsets behind them.