Findings from the Virginia Early Warning Systems Project
National HIgh School Center Blog Written by: Circe Stumbo and Susan Bowles Therriault
When asked what advice the schools would give to others implementing an early warning system, several common ideas emerged.
- Have all the data loaded in your early warning system tool before you convene your intervention team. The work was very abstract for members of their teams until they had actual data to work with.
- Support your team as they begin analyzing data; the process of data analysis was new to most on the diverse teams. While they had a sophisticated understanding of students and instruction, they needed guiding questions, logic models, and other resources to know what to do with the data as they were beginning their analysis. The National High School Center’s Early Warning System Implementation Guide provided this additional support.
- Early warning system tools themselves are powerful in terms of identifying students, but you still need research based evidence about effective interventions. The National High School Center’s Approaches to Dropout Prevention: Heeding Early Warning Signs With Appropriate Interventions was an important resource that the teams needed reminders to use.
- Having an external coach that kept the groups meeting and sharing their findings was important to keeping work on the front burner. With so many competing needs at their schools, both teams appreciated the opportunities to talk monthly and the prompts from the coaches to think about things like how they will evaluate the success of their interventions.
Credit:
Written by: Circe Stumbo and Susan Bowles Therriault http://blog.betterhighschools.org/findings-from-the-virginia-early-warning-systems-project
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