September 19, 2023

By Robert Balfanz, Director, Everyone Graduates Center

As featured in NASBE’s The State Education Standard, September 2023 Volume 23, No. 3

Fostering school connectedness is an effective, universal prevention measure that affects many important student outcomes. Students who are connected to school get better grades, attend more often, have fewer behavioral challenges, graduate from high school, and go to college at higher rates than their disconnected peers.

Schools can, by themselves, act on the elements that drive connection: They can establish baselines, identify improvement strategies, measure impact, and then work to continually improve.

Read the full article to learn more about the costs of disconnection, strategies educators can use to drive connection, and the vital role state boards of education play in setting conditions for districts and schools to counter the effects of the pandemic with student success systems