Our teachers are already rising to meet this moment with creativity and care. The opportunity is to support them with systems that make this work sustainable and scalable, so every student in every classroom benefits from the relationships and responsiveness our best teachers already provide.
As new partners in The GRAD Partnership, Latinos in Action (LIA) are excited to have the opportunity to align our work with the GRAD Partnership’s student success framework. LIA’s Leadership Boot Camps are a strong starting point of this collaboration, as they offer example of how we can foster student voice and agency that the student success system framework promotes.
For over 90 years, Castlemont High School has been a pillar of its East Oakland community, cultivating a deep culture of care for students through many eras of change. Today, Castlemont stands out within the CORE Districts’ Breakthrough Success Community (BTSC), a 45-school improvement network focused on increasing 9th grade success as a path to greater postsecondary opportunity.
Holistic, actionable data are essential to realizing the promise of student success systems. While a district or school’s core student information system can often provide the data and visualizations that student success teams use for reflection and tracking, many districts are also developing their own tools for this purpose. A new publication from Digital Promise, Innovating for Student Success: District-Led Innovation Showcase, highlights some common motivations among districts who invest in developing their own tools, features five examples of custom-built tools, and summarizes some of the cross-cutting lessons from districts that have gone this route.
East Carolina University (ECU) aspires to be a national model for student success, public service, and regional transformation. In the ECU College of Education, the Rural Education Institute (REI) pursues that goal with a specific focus on rural schools and communities. As one of the flagship programs in the REI, the GRAD Partnership provides a model and mechanism for meeting our goals and fulfilling our aspirations to the benefit of students, families, and communities in rural eastern North Carolina. Notably, we’re talking here about more than simple alignment (i.e., the idea that the structure and content of the GRAD Partnership matches up with the purpose and mission of REI). Our experience suggests that the partnership has elevated our work’s relevance and impact.
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.
For students, the first day of school is rarely just another day. It’s the culmination of a summer filled with emotions — anticipation, uncertainty, hope. Students walk through school doors wondering: “Will I succeed here — not just academically, but socially, emotionally, and in preparing for my future?”
Student engagement is one of the most powerful predictors of academic success. When students are engaged, they show up, think critically, and feel connected to their learning environment. This blog post describes each type of engagement, behaviors educators can look for, ways for educators to support the type of engagement, and real-world examples.
I’m discovering something even more powerful than I expected. Teachers aren't just implementing a program or an initiative – they're fundamentally changing what it means to put students at the center of learning.
Creating the conditions for student support systems to flourish requires intentionality not just at individual schools or local school districts but at the state policy level as well.