Pathways to Graduation: Data-Driven Approaches Data to Addressing the Graduation Crisis

The cities successfully shaping Multiple Pathways to Graduation are using data about students to drive their decision making process. Data segmentation can accurately identify which groups of students are most likely to fall off track to graduation, and how and why it happens. With this kind of knowledge, districts can begin to shape effective plans and policies that increase graduation rates.

Each school district has its own context requiring a custom approach to data segmentation. Each of the cities below committed to the goal of increasing graduation rates, but approached the process in different ways. The Parthenon Group has highlighted many of the findings in Pathways to Graduation Data-Driven Strategies for Differentiated Graduation Rate Improvements.

New York City

New York City established the Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation (OMPG) to analyze the dropout crisis in the city, and understand the needs of the overage and under-credited (OA/UC) high school student population-the students most at risk for dropping out. This analysis led to the development of a differentiated portfolio of educational models designed to bring these students to New York State graduation standards and prepare them for meaningful post-secondary opportunities.

The Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation developed a comprehensive strategic plan with financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and analytic support from the Boston-based Parthenon Group. The resulting dataset, representing an unprecedented examination of student experience within a school system, has been critical to system transformation grounded in student population needs. Insights gained through this first strategic planning engagement have led to internal and foundation support for continued analysis to inform comprehensive secondary planning.

This report explains more about their process and findings.

Philadelphia

With support from the William Penn Foundation the Philadelphia Youth Transitions Collaborative's Project U-Turn, working with Ruth Curran Neild and Robert Balfanz from Johns Hopkins University, used a unique set of data obtained from the Kids Integrated Data System (KIDS), which is housed at the University of Pennsylvania's Cartographic Modeling Laboratory. The KIDS system merges individual-level data on young people from the School District of Philadelphia and the city's social service agencies, including the Department of Public Health, the Department of Human Services, and the Office of Emergency Shelter and Services. The resulting data allows cohorts of students to be followed over multiple years, examining their educational outcomes as well as the predictors of graduation and dropout.

For more information read Unfulfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphia's Dropout Crisis, 2000-2005 or go to Project U-Turn.

Also see New Research on the Relationships Between Philadelphians’ Educational Attainment and their Employment, Earnings and Contributions to Government and Society, a July 2009 research brief by the Philadelphia Youth Network.

Portland

Portland's research looked at data for the Portland Public Schools Class of 2004 as it moved through high school to expected graduation in June 2004. The study was undertaken as the basis for determining how to implement support effectively to increase the number of students who graduate from high school. The research focused on learning what indicators best predict which students are at risk for failing to graduate and determining when, by year and quarter, students are most likely to disengage from school.

Portland Public Schools has made significant steps in integrating their alternative schools into the high school structure. This has resulted in high schools learning about techniques that work to better engage students as well as increasing the likelihood that students can get the help they need, when they need it.

For more information go to Connected By 25.

Chicago

As part of their high school reform strategies, Chicago Public Schools worked with the Parthenon Group to better understand the dynamics of their dropout crisis. Finding that most students who fail to graduate fall off-track in the first year of high school, CPS has implemented a number of early intervention strategies as well as improving alternative "graduation pathways". The Graduation Pathways Strategy was presented at a summit on the dropout crisis in February 2008.

In addition, the report What Matters for Staying On-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public Schools released by the Consortium on Chicago School Research resulted in CPS developing an on-track indicator as part of their school accountability measures.

Boston

In the last ten years Boston's schools have improved dramatically, but the drop out rate remained unacceptably high. Like other cities successfully creating Multiple Pathways to Graduation, Boston's first step was segmenting their student population to better understand which student's were dropping out. In conjunction with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Jobs for the Future, and The Parthenon Group, the district commissioned a study to develop a data-driven, citywide strategy to reduce the dropout rate and increase the graduation rate. Findings from the study Strategic Planning to Serve Off-Track Youth: Review and Strategic Implications have provided an unprecedented understanding of Boston's off-track youth, providing valuable data to inform the expansion and development of educational programming to meet the needs of all students. Based on this study, Boston found four predictors that count for 75 percent of their dropout population. They are:

1. Students with one or more eighth grade "risk factors"
2. Students with multiple ninth grade core course failures
3. Substantially separate special education students
4. Late entrant ELL students

Other findings include:

1. Over 80% of students that dropout out do so in the third year of high school or later.
2. Based on course performance, small schools tend to over-perform.
3. Although there are nearly 13,000 students off-track (in and out of school), there are only about 1,000 seats in alternative education. Furthermore, the average graduation rate of the alternative schools (called "specialized schools" in Boston) is only 19% (partially due to the low performance of the largest alternative school). Alternative schools also receive lower levels of funding than other small schools.

Other Resources to Inform the Development of Multiple Pathways to Graduation

Expanding a Portfolio of Schools

Alternative High School Initiative is a consortium of school developers working to expand the availability of alternative schools.

American Youth Policy Forum's Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities Are Reconnecting Out-Of-School Youth documents what committed educators, policymakers, and community leaders across the country are doing to reconnect out-of-school youth to the social and economic mainstream.

National Youth Employment Coalition offers information on financing alternative schools.

Policy Development

Alliance for Excellent Education provides a number of resources including reports on the cost of dropouts to the country.

Center for American Progress offers policy recommendations for re-connecting youth in Creating Postsecondary Pathways to Good Jobs for Young High School Dropouts: The Possibilities and the Challenges.

Jobs for the Future offers resources on building a dual agenda and recommendations for policymakers on addressing the graduation crisis.

National League of Cities offers resources for municipal leadership on high school reform and re-engaging youth including Setting the Stage for New High Schools: Municipal Leadership in Supporting High School Alternatives