What’s Standing in the Way of Educational Success: The Educational Milestones

NAEHCY National Conference, 2019Kerry Wrenick, LMSW and Kristin Myers, Ph.D.

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It's no secret that highly-mobile students are graduating at lower rates than state averages. This session will provide the foundational elements and contributing factors that impact learning from pre-birth-12th grade. Attendees will gain understanding of key educational milestones and strategies to fill

academic gaps for highly-mobile students.

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To graduate, college- and career-ready, students need to successfully navigate several key transitions and acquire a set of academic behaviors and skills - they need to learn

how to succeed at school.

Students signal that they are on- or off-track toward these outcomes through their behaviors

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Educational Milestones

• The research shows that students who leave school do so for several reasons including:

low school attendance lack of student engagement poor academic performance

• Arguably the most important preventative element in addressing dropout prevention is establishing an early warning system (and the use of data) to determine who is at risk of dropping out of school. Indicators made available through an early warning system can help schools target students in need with appropriate interventions.

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ABCs of Dropout

There are three essential pieces of data that need to be gathered to predict with relative accuracy which students will eventually dropout of school. These include:

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ABCs of Dropout in Colorado

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Attendance

State Truancy Rate on the rise – 2.8%Average District

Mobility Rate – 19%

Number of Habitual Truants at an all-time

high, 117,109students

Reduction in expulsions

1,022 total expulsions 24% for marijuana

violations

Behavior Course Performance

Suspensions increased by 14% in three years – today 93,337 suspensions

Each year more than 10,000 students in grades

7th – 12th drop out (2.2% dropout rate)

80.7 percent of the Class of 2017 completed high school in 4 years. 10% of the class were still enrolled.

Urgency: Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness

The education premium, or relative price of highly educated workers, is the ratio

of mean high education wages to mean low education wages.

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Economic Costs of the Dropout Crisis

Lifetime economic cost to society of student with no high school credential vs. high school graduate:

Lower contributions of federal, state, and local tax payments. *

Higher in-kind transfer costs (welfare spending, unemployment payments, food stamps, etc) and incarceration expenditures *

Additional healthcare expenditures **

$180,997

$16,091

$124,362

•Source: "The Consequences of Dropping Out of High School" by The Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University - October 2009** Source: "Potential Economic Impacts of Improved Education on Colorado" by the Alliance for Excellent Education - October 2009

$321,450

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Education Walk Activity

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Pre-Birth

The early years are critical to brain development. There are mountains of research that support the need for intervention and healthy brain development.

• Access to prenatal care• Healthy life choices on behalf of the

mother• Healthy birth weight• Fetal development and gestation length• Pre-birth- babies begin learning language

from their mother

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Infancy Health

SocialThe social development of your baby is what happens when he/she responds to human faces and voices. According to the American Pregnancy Association, he/she may learn to smile back at you when you hold her or she may even begin babbling as if trying to speak to you. Social development affects how your baby plays with other children and adults as she grows.

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Infancy Health

EmotionalA baby's emotions go hand in hand with his/her social development and they need to work together to mature. In the first six months of development, a baby will respond to love and attention by developing a sense of trust, according to the National Network for Child Care. At the same time, a baby will express their emotions, anger, happiness, excitement or fright.

Between six and 12 months, a baby will get angry when their needs are not met but will also smile when content and relaxed.

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Infancy Health

LanguageAccording to Medline Plus, language development is starting to make sounds, learn words and understanding what people say.

• Second month of life- baby will begin to make sounds other than crying, a sign that his language is developing.

• By three months, they will squeal, coo and babble. • At the end of six months, a baby will be able to say one-syllable words

such as "ma" and "pa." • At the end of 12 months, a baby will say two or three words and

imitate sounds. He will also understand many words.

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Impact of Trauma on Brain Development

Impact of Trauma on the Brain

Trauma can impact the developing brain by:- Reducing the number of connections formed- Reducing the size of the cortex- Strengthening survival connection

Resulting in:- Memory problems- Attention difficulty- Language development delays- Emotional and behavioral regulation issues

Early Education/Preschool

• Efforts to define and implement a P-3 approach to learning are emerging across the country and throughout Colorado. A growing body of research supports the knowledge that academic and social skills acquired by age eight provide the foundation for lifelong learning and success. The first decade of a child’s life is the most opportune time to influence learning paths and ensure the very best outcomes for all children.

• Children taught at an early age usually benefit in the following ways: improved social skills, less or no need for special education instruction during subsequent school years, better grades, and enhanced attention spans

• Access to early childhood education can prove to be difficult due to cost, availability, and qualification for eligibility.

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Key Facts about the Importance of Early Literacy

• Graduation, college and career preparedness are more likely possibilities for students who master reading skills by fourth grade

• A student who misses the opportunity to learn to read proficiently before fourth grade almost never catches up.

• Reading to learn enables a student to comprehend facts in social studies and science, understand word problems in math and interpret increasingly complex concepts in language arts.

• According to the Annie. E. Casey Foundation, students who cannot read by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school, and high school drop outs make up 75 percent of citizens receiving food stamps and 90 percent of the Americans on welfare.

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Kindergarten Readiness

Kindergarten marks the start of a child's formal education. A child's first school experiences can influence the way he or she relates to others for the rest of life. For example, success or failure at this stage can affect a child's well-being, self-esteem and motivation.

The academic success of children in later years depends heavily upon their kindergarten readiness. The first few years of education and preparedness are the most crucialto establishing a solid foundation from which children can adapt to school systems and learn successfully. During this period, children develop primary skills that form the foundations of reading, counting, and socialinteraction.

The levels of preparedness with which a child enters kindergarten are academic and emotional, and they rely most heavily on being prepared at home. It is vital to nurture related skills in children, including the ability to focus, think logically, recognize important words, demonstrate some self control, and speak clearly. To help children who are entering their first years of school, it is essential to ensure that adequate support and educational stimulation are provided at home.

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Read By Third Grade

Every child should read by the third grade. This is an elemental building block to receiving a quality education.

Research shows students must make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn by the end of the third grade to be successful in later grades. Each year, as grade-level demands increase,

students who struggle to read can fall further behind.

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Elementary-Middle School Transition

Youth regularly go through transitions – changing grade levels, changing schools, transitioning from school to work – however, such transitions are often left out of schools efforts to support students.

• Schools need to address transitions proactively in order to enhance their own goals of supporting youth development. Examples of transition opportunities include welcoming new arrivals, providing ongoing social supports as students adjust to new grades or new schools, and using before and after-school and summer activities to support students’ academic and social-emotional development to promote success in school.

A well-designed transition plan can help alleviate the anxiety and confusion and restore a sense of belonging that students felt at their old school, or old grade.

• Transition programs can include a variety of activities, but some essential components include providing students and their family with information about the new school, providing students with social support, and bringing school personnel (elementary to middle, middle to high school) together to learn about one another’s curriculum and requirements.

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Elementary-Middle School Transition

In designing transition programs it is important to include all groups involved, including educators, families and students.

• Youth can be very effective in designing programs to support their peers because at one point they were in transition too.

• Families who have successfully transitioned into the school can be a support for entering families – answering questions, providing suggestions, helping with orientation, among other things.

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Middle School Math

• It is not just up to high schools to reduce dropouts…good grades in high school are unlikely unless students have shown strong academic performance in elementary school; this suggests that high schools cannot address this issue alone.

• Elementary and middle schools should work with high schools to prepare students for the ninth-grade transition. Neild and Balfanz (2006) have shown that attendance and failure in eighth grade can be used to predict eventual dropout.

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Eighth to Ninth Grade Transition

Similar to transition from elementary to middle school. These transitional years and settings can create anxiety, fear, social

awkwardness, academic challenges, and unanticipated challenges.

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Course Failure in Ninth Grade

Research from Chicago Public Schools states,

What is often lost in discussions about dropping out is the one factor that is most directly related to graduation—students’ performance in their courses. They have shown that inadequate credit accumulation in the freshman year, which usually results from course failures, is highly predictive of failing to graduate four years later. On the other hand, students with good grades in their first year are very likely to be successful in their remaining years of high school.

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Lack of Credit Accrual

The continued failure in coursework perpetuates a students’ lack of motivation and feelings of failure. Eventually, a student is faced with the fact that a 4-year graduation track is not realistic and decide to dropout. A number of factors contribute to poor attendance, course failure, and behavioral responses. Refer back to the Early Warning signs and ABC’s of dropout prevention (Attendance, behavior, course failure)

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Now what…..

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Identification

Identifying students who are at risk of dropping out of school through the use of data analysis, early warning systems, and the review of policies and practices as a means of preventing student disengagement before it starts.

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Intervention and Support

Successful efforts include transition planning and support, whole school strategies and tiered interventions for students identified as being off-track to graduate or at risk of dropping out. Intervention and supports are data-informed and contextualized to meet student needs.

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Institutional Change

System-wide changes that can be utilized to create an ecosystem for student success, including improving school climate, evaluating policies and practices and understanding the multiple pathways to graduation that can be used to re-engage students and increase graduation rates.

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Methods and Strategies

• Community engagement• Counseling and mentoring• Course completion and credit recovery• Data analysis• Early warning systems• Family partnering• Multiple pathways to graduation• Policy and practices review• School climate• Student re-engagement• Transition Programs For more information, visit: www.cde.state.co.us/dropoutprevention/dropoutpreventionframework

Contact Information

Website: http://www.cde.state.co.us/dropoutprevention

Kristin MyersState Coordinator for Foster Care EducationEmail: myers_k@cde.state.co.us

Kerry WrenickState Coordinator for Homeless EducationEmail: wrenick_k@cde.state.co.us

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