Educational Leadership

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support; extra help courses;

behavior contracts; anger and grief management classes;

and daily success monitoring in which a designated adult at the school checks to see whether the student is in school, understands his or her classes, and gets along with students and teachers.

Some students may need more intensive one-on-one interventions, such as working with a social worker or receiving intense academic tutoring.

Teachers use clear, data-based decision-making rules to determine when a student needs to move from one level of support to another. These rules typically are keyed to key benchmarks. For example, when a student’s attendance drops below the

90 percent threshold, the school assigns the student a mid-intensity, small-group targeted intervention. If the student’s attendance drops below 80 percent, the student receives a higher-intensity, case-managed intervention.

When the student’s attendance improves and appears stable, the school reduces the intensity of the supports but continues to monitor the student.

Diplomas Now—in Action

It’s the biweekly early-warning meeting at a high school that has implemented the Diplomas Now model.

Assembled are an interdisciplinary team of four 9th grade teachers, along with their City Year national service corps members and the Communities in Schools site coordinator. The Talent Development facilitator has just given them a list of students who are demonstrating off-track indicators in attendance (they attended less than

90 percent of the time); behavior (they received three or more office referrals); and course performance (they received a D or an F in a core course).

The team quickly notices a spike in both the number of students with declining attendance and the number with increasing behavior problems. The teachers report that part of the problem is due to their decision to move several students from one class to another for instructional reasons; one unintended consequence has been an increase in disruptive behavior.

As a first step, the teachers resolve to reintroduce students to norms of classroom behavior and recognize students who exhibit these positive behaviors daily. The City Year corps members note that several students who are getting in trouble are not on their focus list; they add them to the group of students they mentor and support.

The Communities in School site coordinator notes that sudden dips in attendance midyear can often be the result of changes in a student’s home life; she volunteers to talk with those students to determine the cause of their attendance dip and, if needed, to provide them with case-managed supports.

Team members also note that several students have improved their attendance. They resolve to examine at the next meeting whether some are ready to move from more active support to less intensive monitoring.

monitoring, tutoring and mentoring, and homework support. They also provide the person-power to support whole-school attendance and positive behavior support campaigns by managing weekly incentive and recognition efforts. In addition, they staff after-school tutoring and enrichment activities and organize service learning projects. The City Year teams are led by an experienced program manager who is well trained in the Diplomas Now model.

The Communities in Schools model uses community-based integrated student supports— interventions that improve student achievement by connecting community resources with students’ academic and social service needs. Using the early-warning tracking system and a needs assessment, the Communities in Schools site coordinator organizes and monitors sustained individual interventions that last several weeks, months, or possibly, years. These include small-group anger and grief management sessions, one-on-one supports from mental health providers, and family supports for homelessness.

The coordinator also brings

Element 3: Strategic

in community supports that

Deployment of “Near Peers”

corps members receive one month of
address schoolwide needs. These may
In the Diplomas Now program, City
training in relevant subject areas, such
include health screenings; college and
Year places teams of 8–15 highly trained as tutoring techniques and behavior
career fairs; and parent supports, such
national service corps members (young management.

as classes for the General Educational
adults up to 24 years old) in each school
four days a week, from before the
Each “near peer” works with 15 or
so students with off-track indicators.