NCLD is a founding member of the GRAD Partnership, established in 2022 with the shared commitment to working in collaboration with leading education organizations to maximize our collective impact on students’ ability to succeed in school.
When we signed on as an Intermediary partner with the GRAD Partnership - an initiative housed in Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center - my professional excitement was matched only by my personal investment in this work. As President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, I've spent years witnessing the power of collective impact to transform systems. As the grandmother and guardian of two teenage boys navigating high school in a post-pandemic world, I've experienced firsthand the urgent need for that transformation in schools.
A golden rule of improvement work is “you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.” That is certainly true when it comes to displaying improvement data. Putting the right data, at the right time, in the hands of those who need it, is key to improving student outcomes.
In our fast-paced world of education, it's easy to rush from task to task without pausing to ask ourselves a critical question: What are we learning from our experiences? In our April community of practice session, we explored how intentional reflection can be a powerful driver of growth for ourselves, our teams, and ultimately our students.
This year’s Summit featured a presentation highlighting the work of two GRAD Partnership intermediary organizations implementing student success systems in rural contexts.
At Globe High School in Arizona, a new GRAD Partnership school, history is still alive and being created every day. Cross-posted from Rural Schools Collaborative April 17, 2025 Located about two hours east of Phoenix lies the scenic town of…
By keeping interventions straightforward, data-driven, and centered on student strengths, we empower our success teams to act.
Last month, over 100 educators came together to learn, collaborate and inspire each other during the GRAD Partnership’s National Student Support Systems Convening. Over the course of two days, participants shared lessons, strategies and goals with the collective aim of building high-quality student success systems across the nation.
Data for accountability has been used to set goals, evaluate practices, and connect efforts to student outcomes. While essential, this approach leaves little room for reflection or flexibility. In contrast, data for transformation blends accountability with deeper reflection and inquiry into practices, guiding educators to examine and refine their strategies to better serve students.
Ten schools in the Ozarks received a grant for GRAD Partnership from the Rural Schools Collaborative (RSC) to implement student-success systems and participate in the rural portion of a national project.