Student Progress to Graduation in New York City High Schools. Part II: Student Achievement as "Stock" and "Flow"--Reimagining Early Warning Systems for At-Risk Students

New Visions for Public Schools has leveraged student-level data to help schools identify at-risk students, designed metrics to capture student progress toward graduation, developed data tools and reports that visualize student progress at different levels of aggregation for different audiences, and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNew Visions for Public Schools
Main Authors Fairchild, Susan, Carrino, Gerard, Gunton, Brad, Soderquist, Chris, Hsiao, Andrew, Donohue, Beverly, Farrell, Timothy
Format Report
LanguageEnglish
Published New Visions for Public Schools 2012
Subjects
Academic Achievement
Achievement Gains
At Risk Students
Cohort Analysis
Data Analysis
Graduation Requirements
Human Capital
Identification
Intervention
New York
Program Development
Rhetoric
School Administration
Student School Relationship
Systems Approach
Urban Schools
New York
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Summary:New Visions for Public Schools has leveraged student-level data to help schools identify at-risk students, designed metrics to capture student progress toward graduation, developed data tools and reports that visualize student progress at different levels of aggregation for different audiences, and implemented real-time data systems for educators. Central to New Visions' early warning system is the point-in-time index--the four-color Progress to Graduation Metric--made possible through the greater availability of real-time student data such as graduation rates, attendance rates, credit accumulation, Regents' passage rates, student assessments, and other key indicators of student performance. Student performance benchmarks like New Visions' Progress to Graduation Metric serve as one of a school's tools for identifying at-risk students and help to inform early-warning interventions. These same student performance benchmarks, when aggregated at the school level, become one of a district's tools for identifying at-risk schools and informing interventions. Early warning systems, like New Visions' Progress to Graduation Metric, while providing a solid basis for characterizing a student, a classroom, a department, a school, or a district at a moment in time, are also limited. The primary intent of this paper is to present a new framework that will guide the next phase of New Visions' early warning data work. These are the goals of this paper: (1) To illustrate how a "systems thinking" approach adds dimension and depth to the understanding of student performance, allowing to reimagine data systems; (2) To introduce the concept of "structural volatility"--and the new data tool that begins to capture this phenomenon; (3) To suggest how the terms "at risk" and "early warning," despite the passion and urgency with which they were first introduced in "A Nation at Risk," have become the politic, specialist language Wendell Berry cautions against; and how, by shifting the framework through which the nation understands risk, the nation restores and reclaims them. Appended are: (1) New Visions' Progress Toward Graduation Metric: 2 Term Schools; and (2) Technical Notes. (Contains 12 figures, 2 tables, and 26 footnotes.)