Over the past two and half years, our long-held belief that student support is a group effort has been reinforced. There is no silver bullet that solves every academic and social-emotional problem. However, providing students with a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) to meet them where they are on their educational journey is an important step toward student success.
Graduation Alliance helps school districts and state education agencies provide an additional layer of support to their most vulnerable students through:
- Locating and bringing students back to school through our team of re-engagement experts
- Providing an alternative pathway to graduation for students who can’t or won’t return to traditional school
- Offering nonjudgmental, personalized support to help every student make it to graduation
With so much discouraging news circulating over the past few years, we wanted to focus on some good news this November. A large percentage of our ENGAGE partner districts saw an increase in graduation rates in 2022!
The fate of high school graduation rates was up in the air due to the pandemic, but recent studies show that graduation rates have been the least affected of commonly measured educational outcomes. Rates increased in 2020, likely due to relaxed graduation requirements in the face of an unprecedented global pandemic, and dipped in 2021. While numbers are still coming out for the most recent cohort, some districts are bouncing back and even surpassing pre-pandemic numbers.
We are thrilled to share that 47% of our partner districts* with reported 2021-22 graduation data experienced a graduation rate increase from the 2020-21 school year. Though we cannot attribute their success solely to our program, we are happy to have played a part in their school’s strategy to boost academic performance and school attendance.
Mission Measurement’s independent evaluation of our ENGAGE Attendance Recovery program — using data from a large, highly diverse school district — demonstrated significant gains in…
- Student engagement and attendance
- GPA
- Credit earn rate
- Graduation rate
…when comparing students who were referred to the program and participated as compared to those who did not participate.
Our attendance recovery and dropout recovery programs are just a piece of the puzzle, but by providing students with more support and more pathways to success, we’ll continue to see more and more students graduating from high school.
*This percentage was calculated based on graduation rate data for 2020-21 and 2021-22 from the South Carolina Department of Education.