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Early Warning and Response Systems
Early warning systems use readily available data to alert teachers and administrators to students who are on the pathway to dropping out. A key benefit of early warning systems is that they help educators to know what to look for amid the mountains of data about students. Early warning systems can be implemented at the middle and high school levels – even as early as 6th grade. Researchers from the Everyone Graduates Center found that more than 50% of the dropouts in Philadelphia could be identified in eighth grade using just three indicators:
1) failing mathematics in eighth grade,
2) failing English in eighth grade, and
3) attending school less than 80% of the time.
What does it take to develop an early warning system?
An ideal early warning system for a district is developed from that district’s data. At a minimum, creating an early warning system involves:
- Assembling longitudinal data for individual students on a) graduation status and b) potential predictors of dropout, such as student attendance, behavior, grades, and test scores;
- Identifying the threshold level of each predictor that gives students a high probability of dropping out; and
- Checking that the predictors identify a high percentage of the students in that district who drop out of school.
The Everyone Graduates Center provides technical assistance and customized analyses to school districts and states that are interested in developing early warning systems. Districts with the capacity to analyze their own student data may be able to use the Early Warning Indicator tool developed by the National High School Center.
Are there examples of schools and districts using early warning systems?
Chicago uses an early warning system for its ninth graders. Ninth graders who do not earn on-time promotion to tenth grade and/or who fail at least one semester core course are flagged as having a high probability of dropping out of school. These indicators are also part of the accountability system in the Chicago Public Schools.
Several middle schools in Philadelphia are using an early warning system to identify and intervene with sixth graders who are already indicating that they are on the path to dropping out. A menu on the district’s computerized data system allows teachers to track student attendance and grades during the year. Teams of teachers meet periodically to review student data on attendance, grades, and behavior. Students who are not responding to a less-intensive intervention are given more intensive support. Likewise, students whose school outcomes have improved can be supported with a less intensive and costly intervention.
Unfulfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphia’s Dropout Crisis.
Ruth Curran Neild and Robert Balfanz. (2006). Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Youth Network.
A Curriculum of Engagement: Micro-process Interventions that Support Successful Transitions from Middle to High School
What are the daily actions adults in schools must take to ensure students attend regularly, are engaged in schoolwork, and learn to high standards? This three-year project funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences is developing and piloting an attendance outreach and incentive program, an academic counseling and support program, and a team-based behavior management program. Each component is designed to address a specific point of disengagement that many struggling students experience during the transition into high school, and to provide students with the support, skills, incentives, and perspectives they need to negotiate the transition successfully.
The project addresses shortcomings of current middle and high school reform efforts by moving beyond a focus on structure (e.g. small learning communities) and applying emerging understandings of adolescent engagement and the factors that push students off the path to graduation. The interventions are being piloted in middle and high schools with a high degree of academic and social challenge where strong interventions are needed to motivate adolescents to learn, attend school regularly, and persist to graduation. Interventions emphasize the daily, relational work of promoting strong attendance, positive behavior, and students’ engagement in their academic success. By focusing on both middle and early high school grades, they also aim to offer consistency of care through students’ transition into high school—reducing the number of students who enter high school with “one foot out the school door” already and enabling ninth-grade interventions to be more effective with a larger number of students because the students will have experienced similar supports throughout the middle grades.
For more information contact Nettie Legters at nlegters@csos.jhu.edu or Marcy Davis at mdavis@csos.jhu.edu.
Three Steps to Building an Early Warning and Intervention System for Potential Dropouts
Most dropouts are identifiable years before they dropout, struggle in or disengage from school for three to four or more years before they dropout, are preventable, and ultimately want to graduate from high school.
This PowerPoint offers three steps toward reducing dropouts in your community.
Step 1: Understand the dropout problem in your community.
Step 2: Build an early warning, prevention and intervention system.
Step 3: Involve the community.
To learn more about how to reduce dropouts in your community, see Three Steps to Building an Early Warning and Intervention System for Potential Dropouts.
An Early Warning System
This article for practitioners summarizes work by Everyone Graduates researchers on early indicators of dropout. We note that high school dropout often has been viewed as an event that is mysterious and difficult to predict. Our work in Philadelphia, however, suggests that the vast majority of dropouts sent signals of being on the path to dropout long before they finally left school. The article describes the early warning indicators that we identified for 6th graders, 8th graders, and high school freshmen.
An Early Warning System. Ruth Curran Neild, Robert Balfanz, and Liza Herzog. Educational Leadership, October 2007 | Volume 65 | Number 2 Early Intervention at Every Age Pages 28-33. View the article online here.
Related Studies
Using Early-Warning Data to Improve Graduation Rates:
Closing Cracks in the Education System
Simply identifying at-risk students does nothing to mitigate their risk factors and help them graduate. However, the predictive power of early-warning data is being harnessed by schools, districts, states, and support organiza-tions around the country and being used to guide interventions and embed prevention strategies throughout schools. These approaches, still in their early stages, are helping educa-tors prevent students from falling off the track to graduation and to target interventions and support to students who need them most. Early-warning data also can be used to better understand—and target re-sources to—low-performing schools where concentrated numbers of students require significantly improved schools in order to succeed.
Using Early-Warning Data to Improve Graduation Rates:
Closing Cracks in the Education System
Lyndsay Pinkus. Alliance for Excellent Education Policy Brief, 2008. View online here.
Developing Early Warning Systems to Identify
Potential High School Dropouts
The information that follows and an accompanying tool developed by the National High School Center can help
schools and districts to systematically collect early warning indicator data so they can identify students at highest risk
of dropout. An early warning system can be implemented at the school as well as at district levels. The role of the
state is critical for providing support that can help districts and schools collect the key information with relative ease,
including the use of integrated longitudinal data systems.
Developing Early Warning Systems to Identify Potential High School Dropouts Jessica B. Heppen and Susan Bowles Therriault. National High School Center. July 2008. View online here.
Approaches to Dropout
Prevention:
Heeding
Early Warning Signs
With Appropriate
Interventions
Most future dropouts can also be identified in the first year of high school when a sense of urgency around reaching
out and supporting these students is critical before they disappear from school. These key indicators can assist decision
makers in targeting dropout prevention resources to the students most at risk of imminently leaving school.
Approaches to Dropout
Prevention:
Heeding
Early Warning Signs
With Appropriate
Interventions Louise Kennelly &
Maggie Monrad. National High School Center. October, 2007. View online here.