Higher Ed's Moneyball?

Oregon schools are leveraging the power of relationships to improve attendance and graduation rates for Pacific Islander and Black students. Community resource specialists step in to get students to school, doctor's appointments, family funerals, and more: “I’m honestly not doing anything special. I hate to say that, there’s no science around what I’m doing. It’s just trust and building a relationship and giving them the time."

In the last decade, collaborations between non-profit student-support organizations and public schools have fostered a model called "Last-Chance Schools" with remarkable success. The program targets root causes for dropping out, including economic disadvantages, mental health challenges, violence, and unstable home lives. As several Boston charter schools demonstrate, use of social-emotional learning, conflict mediation instead of zero-tolerance discipline, and flexible curricula has helped boost graduation and college acceptance rates while lowering suspensions.

To improve its consistently high truancy rates, last academic year Española Valley High School implemented a new truancy and dropout prevention program aimed at shaping up poor attendance. The results are yet to be determined — but debate still rages within the school about the best method for battling truancy.

Schools in Los Angeles have strict consequences for truancy and tardiness but offer rewards and recognition for good attendance. Administrators use iPhones to record the ID numbers of tardy students, tracking them in order to engage the appropriate intervention.

The ecosystem of D.C. charter schools that has evolved over the last two decades represents a cornucopia of creative and nontraditional approaches to education, in addition to fairly traditional college-prep schools, and is now producing some of the highest graduation rates, college acceptance rates, and average test scores in public schools in the nation.

A specialized software called AttendanceK12 helps school secretaries, attendance counselors, and administrators more easily track student absences so they can intervene with families sooner, even offering options to automatically send parents an email when students reach a certain threshold of missed school hours. School leaders consider the technology an important element of a strategy that has helped reduce chronic absenteeism rates.

In Washington, North Thurston Public Schools increased the graduation rate of students experiencing homelessness from 65% to 84% by hiring student navigators. These staff members consistently support students experiencing homelessness and attend to needs like finding housing, applying for college, or anything else that might arise.

Oglethorpe County High School in Georgia increased their graduation rate to almost 95% by connecting students regularly with counselors starting freshman year to help them meet their goals.

A growing number of U.S. schools are partnering with technology companies and using software programs to monitor students' social media for violent posts. However, some are expressing concern about how this practice and its algorithms may violate student privacy and lead to further discrimination against students of color.

The town of Clinton, Iowa was struggling both economically and with student retention until a partnership with an American businessman and a Chinese company brought 72 Chinese students to fill empty seats in the public high schools. Not only does this stir up the local economy with businesses jumping at the chance to serve a new audience, but the students all benefit from the cultural and educational exchange. The Clinton school board and district representatives all voted unanimously for the program, and both sides are looking forward to continuing to develop and grow the program.