July 11, 2025
By Nancy Van Milligan, President and CEO of Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque
This is the second in a series of blog posts chronicling Community Foundation of Dubuque’s work with the GRAD Partnership, cross-posted from the Foundation’s website.
In my region, I see youth in crisis. In a post-pandemic world, they seem disconnected from what matters most in their development, from their education to their relationships.
While this comes through in the conversations I have with local educators, it’s most apparent in my own family. For example, last week I drove one of my grandsons and his friend to the bookstore. They were chatting about how they failed a math class. I asked, “Who was the teacher?” Neither of them knew her name. I was shocked. At the same time, their response was enlightening.
The boys’ frustration and failure has made me yearn to understand what transformation looks like. That’s where the GRAD Partnership comes in.
Evidence-Based
Before I learned about the GRAD Partnership, we at the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque had been engaging stakeholders to tackle chronic absenteeism. However, we struggled to find methods that could both change the systems that held the problem in place and also be scaled to drive impact across a seven-county region.
When I was introduced to the GRAD Partnership, I was excited. I became energized as I read about the framework and reviewed the data. Here was an approach that appeared to be exactly what our schools needed to address our post-COVID reality of chronic absenteeism, course failures, and brain health challenges – the issues I could see first-hand in my grandsons, their friends, and the thousands of other students whose lives our Foundation works to improve.
As compelling as the GRAD Partnership’s Year-One Impact Report was, I wanted more assurance that this approach was right for us. After all, we were recruiting more schools and investing significant Foundation resources. I needed to be sure this wasn’t just another promising initiative that would fade away.
So, I got on the phone to hear first-hand from educators already doing this work. Through these conversations, I’m discovering something even more powerful than I expected. They aren’t just implementing a program or an initiative – they’re fundamentally changing what it means to put students at the center of learning.
The Personal Stakes
As I talked with teachers across the nation who are embracing this approach, I keep thinking about my grandsons, disconnected and struggling to see the relevance of school in their lives.
My conversations have been affirming. I’m understanding what transformation of the education system looks like and see a future where children like my grandsons can thrive in school. Listening to these teachers, I believe transformation happens when it’s led by educators who refuse to accept that disengagement is inevitable.
Meet the Change-Makers
I’ve talked with many dedicated teachers who are implementing the GRAD Partnership’s student success framework. I want to share the stories of two of them to help shed light on the ways educators from different backgrounds and communities are adapting student success systems to their students’ unique circumstances and finding success.
Tara, middle school teacher, New York City
Tara had always worked with elementary students. But this year, she found herself in a new school, leading the implementation of student success systems, and face-to-face with middle-schoolers, “mini adults,” as she calls them.
At first, it was unfamiliar territory. Then, something shifted as the team analyzed attendance data. She began to see her students differently, not just as learners, but as people navigating complex lives. Many of the English New Language (ENL) students didn’t even realize they were chronically absent. The data was a wake-up call and a reminder that understanding starts with empathy.
Lisa, high school teacher, Albuquerque, NM
At Lisa’s Title I high school, initiatives were everywhere. Sometimes, there were too many to count. With the GRAD Partnership’s approach, she combined several of these teams into one with a laser focus on student success. Her goal was simple: Build on what was working and make it stronger.
Looking at student data, the team decided to pinpoint a small group of 25 students who had good attendance but frequent behavior referrals and were failing some of their classes. To understand the root causes, they invited these students to a luncheon focus group and asked questions like “How are you being greeted every day when you enter school?” Based on the student responses, the team is developing activities for all students and staff during the first 20 days of the upcoming school year with an emphasis on student and staff connectedness.
What strikes me about each of these stories is how the teacher started with a simple recognition: Their students weren’t just struggling academically. They were struggling to feel seen, heard and valued as partners in their own learning.
What Student-Centered Culture Looks Like in Practice
The transformation isn’t about grand gestures or complete overhauls. Instead, it’s built on daily decisions to invite students into conversations that traditionally happen without them.
Students are co-creating classroom expectations through regular dialogue sessions where they identify what helps them learn best. In practice, this means students are involved in analyzing their own data patterns, participating in student success team meetings when appropriate, and helping design the supports they need. With other approaches, they might just be recipients of interventions; with this approach, they’re partners in identifying what’s working and what needs to change.
The GRAD Partnership’s student success framework provides the structure that makes this possible. Rather than relying on intuition alone, teachers have a data-driven system for identifying students who need support and evidence-based strategies for engaging them as partners in finding solutions.
The early warning system monitors what researchers call the “ABCs”: attendance, behavior/social-emotional development, and course performance. Rather than just flagging problems, though, the system empowers students to understand their own patterns. When students see their real-time data on these indicators, they become active participants in finding solutions.
Student success teams meet regularly and include students in strategic planning sessions. The framework requires teams to have “clearly defined roles and responsibilities” and “shared set of norms that support continual reflection and improvement, seeking perspectives and voice from a wide range of stakeholders.” This means students aren’t just talked about. Instead, they’re included in the conversations that shape their educational experience.
What’s particularly powerful in our rural schools is how relationships that extend beyond the classroom walls make this work even more impactful. When a teacher knows not just a student but also their family, community context, and dreams beyond graduation, student-centered approaches become both more personal and more urgent.
The Courage to Change
None of this happens overnight, and it doesn’t happen without courage.
Several teachers told me about the discomfort of giving up control, of not having all the answers, of learning alongside their students rather than always being the expert. Others talked about pushback from colleagues who questioned why they were “making things harder” or parents who worried about whether students were learning enough “real” content.
But what kept them going was what they saw happening with their students. Behaviors were improving and students were showing up to class engaged.
One teacher told me the story of Jasmine, a junior who was technically passing her classes, but barely. Her grades hovered around D’s and C-minuses. The early warning system flagged her both because of her grades and because it detected a pattern: She was present physically but completely disengaged. She’d sit in the back, never participate and never ask questions.
Through the student success coaching component, teachers learned that Jasmine felt invisible. She’d moved from another state sophomore year and never really found her place. She was convinced she wasn’t “smart enough” for higher-level classes and had given up trying.
The GRAD Partnership team partnered her with the Spanish teacher, who learned that Jasmine was bilingual and had incredible insights about literature when discussing texts in both languages. The Spanish teacher encouraged Jasmine to join their peer tutoring program, but not as someone needing help. The teacher encouraged Jasmine to join as a tutor herself, helping other students navigate bilingual learning.
The transformation was remarkable. Jasmine went from silent and withdrawn to becoming one of their most engaged students. She started raising her hand and joining class discussions, and her grades jumped to A’s and B’s. But the real victory was in something she shared: “I never knew I had something valuable to offer other students.” She’s now planning to study education in college and wants to become a teacher herself.
Early Wins and Future Vision
Last month, the GRAD Partnership followed up their first year results with a Year-Two Impact Report showing that middle and high schools implementing student success systems continue to achieve substantial progress in reducing chronic absenteeism and course failure rates, which are strong predictors of high school graduation and postsecondary success.
Based on the GRAD Partnership framework, schools are tracking multiple indicators of student success:
Attendance improvements: Schools monitor both chronic absenteeism rates and patterns of engagement, measuring not just physical presence but emotional and academic engagement
Behavioral indicators: Reduction in disciplinary referrals as students develop a stronger sense of agency, belonging and connectedness
Course performance: Real-time tracking of academic progress that allows for immediate intervention rather than waiting for semester grades
Well-being measures: Students report increased sense of agency, belonging and connectedness through regular surveys and feedback sessions.
But the numbers only capture so much. Here’s one student’s story:
At first, Natalia, an ENL student, said she didn’t feel connected to any other students or adults in the building. She was part of a small group of students who were given a survey question every other Friday. One question hit hard: “Did a teacher ask how you were doing, and did they actually care about your response?” Her honest answer was “no.”
Once aware of this information, a teacher met her at the door every morning and greeted her by name. During recess, teachers coached her to say, “Can I join you?” to other students. Slowly, the walls came down. She felt she had friends at school and that her teachers cared about her. She felt comfortable telling her teacher that she missed school because of immigration court and because she didn’t have a metro card. She felt like she belonged, and her attendance improved.
What excites me most is how this approach is spreading. Teachers who’ve experienced the power of student-centered culture are becoming informal mentors to their colleagues. Administrators are asking how they can better support these innovations. And students are asking why all their classes can’t be like this.
Where Kitchen Table Meets Classroom
As I reflect on what I’ve heard from teachers, I can’t help but imagine what school might feel like for my grandsons if more educators embraced this approach. I am confident they would not only know their teacher’s name but would have a sense of belonging and purpose.
Instead of feeling like passive recipients of information that doesn’t feel relevant, they could be partners in their own learning journey. Instead of disconnection, they could experience the deep satisfaction that comes from having their voices heard and their perspectives valued.
Educators implementing the GRAD Partnership framework are proving that student-centered culture is more than just a nice idea. It’s a practical reality that transforms outcomes for everyone involved. They’re showing us that when we trust students to be partners in their education, when we center their experiences and agency, we don’t just improve test scores or graduation rates. We restore the fundamental relationship between learner and learning that makes education meaningful.
The teachers I talked to aren’t waiting for permission or perfect conditions. They’re creating the change they want to see, one relationship and one classroom at a time. They’re proof that transformation is possible, even in the most challenging circumstances.
Note: names in this post have been changed to protect identity
In my next blog, I’ll share insights from our Rural School Teachers Summit, where educators from across the region come together to explore how the GRAD Partnership can work in rural school settings. I’ll also share what I learned about turning student-centered principles into daily practice, including the tools, partnerships, and mindset shifts that make the difference between good intentions and real transformation.