EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS 2.0
THE KEY ELEMENTS OF PATHWAYS TO ADULT SUCCESS (PAS)
PAS is a system to help schools and communities provide the support middle and high school students need to graduate and then succeed in postsecondary preparation leading to a bachelor’s or associate degree, industry certification, or other meaningful career training.
Early Warning Systems 2.0 (EWS 2.0) is the heart of the PAS system, allowing schools to monitor students’ paths using specific indicators of progress, to gather and analyze data, and to make decisions to provide more support for students to graduate from school prepared for adult success.
Making informed choices about postsecondary schooling and training is critical for a student to achieve adult success. This is only possible when students are equitably provided guidance, experiences, and navigation supports.
Important solutions must be pursued through partnerships that reach outward from the school — into the community, postsecondary institutions, businesses and nonprofit organizations, all working with local students and their families. PAS also offers an online library of How-To’s, providing educators and stakeholders access to a variety of practical resources to help them develop systems to improve students’ postsecondary preparation.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS
Early Warning Systems (EWS) using predictive indicators of student success were developed in the first decade of the century and focused on dropout prevention and raising high school graduation rates.
The core idea of EWS is as follows:
First, monitor all students’ progress using predictive indicators of key outcomes (high school graduation, postsecondary success etc.).
Teams of adults then combine this data with their knowledge of students to devise effective actions for the greatest impact by identifying the most strategic point of action, whether at the individual, class, grade, or school level.
Finally, the selected actions’ outcome is monitored, and the action adjusted as needed, until students are back on track or kept on track to the desired outcome.
CREATING AN EARLY WARNING SYSTEM
Over the course of a year, through multiple face-to-face and virtual meetings, the PAS team drew on the wisdom of three expert workgroups on DATA, INDICATORS, and ACTIONS, composed of individuals with EWS experience, to create a shared understanding of the evidence base, so that field experience of EWS could be extended and adapted to support student progress not only to high school graduation, but also to postsecondary success.
This process resulted in EWS 2.0.
We provide details for each step in the EWS 2.0 system:
~ using the best indicators for student success,
~ engaging in in-depth analysis of the data and results,
~ and then strategically selecting, applying, and monitoring effective strategic actions to support student progress through secondary and postsecondary schooling.
We also detail how data systems can best be organized to enable schools and communities to build their own locally appropriate forms of EWS 2.0.
Finally, we share the wisdom of PAS collaborators on ways teams of adults working together to advance student success can make EWS 2.0 useful and effective.
BUILDING EWS
DATA SYSTEMS RECOMMENDATIONS
STANDARDS
FOR
PREDICTIVE INDICATORS
EWS 2.0 ANALYSIS/ROOT CAUSES AND STRATEGIC ACTIONS
STANDARDS
FOR
ACTION
THE ROLES OF SCHOOL/DISTRICT LEADERS AND TEAMS IN EWS 2.0