In the first episode of our third season, Dr. Saashya Rodrigo, Principal Researcher from the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), joins Dr. Balfanz to discuss the work NCLD is doing to ensure that students with disabilities feel a strong sense of agency, belonging, and connectedness and receive the support they need. She explains NCLD’s role as one of nine organizing partners of the GRAD Partnership and the work the coalition is doing to design schools so they work for all students, including those with disabilities and learning differences. She also discusses the new survey NCLD will conduct this month to explore the experiences of young adults with learning disabilities who either dropped out of high school or considered dropping out but went on to graduate.
In the first episode of our third season, Dr. Saashya Rodrigo, Principal Researcher from the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD), joins Dr. Balfanz to discuss the work NCLD is doing to ensure that students with disabilities feel a strong sense of agency, belonging, and connectedness and receive the support they need. She explains NCLD’s role as one of nine organizing partners of the GRAD Partnership and the work the coalition is doing to design schools so they work for all students, including those with disabilities and learning differences. She also discusses the new survey NCLD will conduct this month to explore the experiences of young adults with learning disabilities who either dropped out of high school or considered dropping out but went on to graduate.
Robert Balfanz (00:04.493)
Hello and welcome to season three of the Designing Education Podcast. In today's episode, we'll be talking to Sasha Rodrigo, Principal Researcher from the National Center for Learning Disabilities. We can't wait to jump into the conversation. But before we start, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. We're available on Spotify, Apple, and Google Podcasts, just to name a few.
Robert Balfanz (00:34.294)
Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast and never miss an episode.
Robert Balfanz (00:40.833)
Welcome to the Designing Education podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, Director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. In this episode, we're going to engage in conversation with Saashya Rodrigo, Principal Researcher for the National Center for Learning Disabilities. It is the first episode of our third season of conversations we're having with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country about what it will take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets up on a pathway to long-term success. This season, we're doing a deep dive on student success systems. And today we'll be exploring what we need to learn in order to ensure that students with disabilities feel a strong sense of agency, belonging and connection in school, receive the support they need, when they need them, and have the same opportunities on a pathway to adult success as everyone else.
Robert Balfanz (01:36.013)
This is essential because of all the progress the nation has made in increasing high school graduation and college going rates, the progress has not been shared equally by all students. Students with disabilities have the lowest national high school graduation rate among any subgroup. Close to a third of students with disabilities are not graduating with their class, and in some states, while these students make up less than 15% of all students, they account for 40% of those students that are not graduating.
Robert Balfanz (02:05.721)
Students with disabilities also have some of the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, course failure, and suspensions. At the same time, we know that the overwhelming majority of these students, in fact, nearly all, have the ability and the capacity to succeed in high school and in college. This is a big blinking red light telling us that many of our schools are not designed to provide students with disabilities with what they need to succeed. For far too many of them, we have created a student failure system rather than a student success system.
This is why we are so excited to have Sasha here with us today to share the work being done by the National Center for Learning Disabilities and the Grad Partnership to help figure out what is needed to design schools so they work for all students, including those with disabilities and learning differences. Welcome, Saashya. It's wonderful to have you here today.
Saashya Rodrigo (02:53.378)
Thank you for having me.
Robert Balfanz (02:56.321)
We start all our podcast by asking our guests the same question. When you were in high school, what was a good day?
Saashya Rodrigo (03:04.274)
Yeah, so I went to high school in Sri Lanka, which is where I'm originally from. I didn't have the best time in school. My grades weren't that great. I was severely unmotivated. I didn't feel good about myself or my future. I didn't have good relationships with many of my teachers. So it was very rare for me to have to experience a good day when I was in high school. But...
On the rare occasion that I did, it usually boiled down to my experience or my relationships with my teachers, my friends, and also myself. So with my teachers, you know, feeling like I mattered to them, feeling like my progress mattered to them, that I was being recognized for doing the right thing or for working hard, that I was being supported and encouraged to be the best version of myself. That was a good day for me when it came to teachers.
When it came to my friends, feeling that sense of belonging, you know, talking about the little ABCs, feeling like I had at least one person in that classroom that I could rely on that, you know, who had my back and who could also rely on me. That made me feel like, you know, that was a good day. And then in terms of self, on a good day in high school, I would feel good about myself. I would feel motivated to do my best. I wouldn't be afraid to fail or to make mistakes. I felt like I was contributing to the learning environment, to my friends, I wasn't frustrating my teachers. So, I didn't mean to sound so negative, but it's…
Robert Balfanz (04:44.937)
No, no, that's the reality. And as we're going to get in this conversation, our listeners are going to see that you almost perfectly describe this idea of school connectedness that we're going to dig into. When kids feel there's an adult that knows and cares about them, when they feel that they have supportive peers, when they're doing something that's meaningful to them, they feel connected at school. And school is a place they want to be in. As you pointed out, unfortunately, for yourself and for many others, that's the rare occasion, not the norm. And really what we've got to do is create schools where that's the norm. That's not the exception. So let's go ahead.
Saashya Rodrigo (05:20.438)
Mm-hmm. Right, absolutely. It was that not so great experience in high school and the rarity of me coming across those good days that ultimately made me get into this career in education and pursue my PhD and finally work with people like you all to better the school systems that we see today.
Robert Balfanz (05:45.729)
Yeah, that's great. So let's dive into it. How can we do this better? So, to start, can you tell us a little bit about the National Center for Learning Disabilities, or NCLD, and what it's trying to achieve?
Saashya Rodrigo (05:57.738)
Yeah, so NCLD is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to improving the lives of children and young adults with learning disabilities. So through our research, programming, policy, and advocacy efforts, we aim to empower individuals with LD with learning disabilities, their parents and caregivers, their teachers, administrators, and the community at large to advocate for and create a more equitable society so that individuals with learning disabilities cannot just survive, but thrive.
Robert Balfanz (06:36.365)
That's wonderful. Can you share with us a little more about students with learning disabilities or differences? When people hear these terms, what should they know?
Saashya Rodrigo (06:47.082)
Yes, so a learning disability is a brain-based disorder, and it affects an individual's ability to read, write, or do math. You may have heard of terms like dyslexia, which is a type of reading disability. Dysgraphia is a type of writing disability. Dyscalculia is a type of math disability. So reading, writing, and math disabilities make up what we call specific learning disabilities or SLDs, which is actually one of the 13 IDEA disability categories protected under the IDEA Act.
Robert Balfanz (7:13.849)
Saashya, could you just explain to our listeners what IDEA stands for?
Saashya Rodrigo (7:18.185)
Yeah, so IDEA stands for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is a federal law that ensures that students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education.
And we'll dig a little bit into this because it's a very interesting thing that students with disabilities are one of the few student groups that have a special law to help them. And one thing we're gonna dig into is given that and given some of the resources that come with it.
doesn't seem to be fully working, right? And that's one of the things that we're gonna be digging into. And as part of that, last year, NCLD and the Grad Partnership brought together parents, students with learning disabilities, educators, special educators, and researchers to examine together the barriers to high school success for students with learning disabilities. Before we get into what was learned…
Robert Balfanz (08:46.445)
Can you tell us a little bit about why it was important to bring this group of folks like this together? This diverse group of folks.
Saashya Rodrigo (08:23.982)
Uh-huh.
Saashya Rodrigo (08:53.182)
Yeah, so it's no surprise that we're still seeing a rise in dropout rates, as you mentioned. We're still seeing struggling students. We're still seeing absences on the rise. We're seeing new education models and teaching models and policies come in. But something still isn't right. And one of the biggest issues we're seeing with how our education system runs is that we all seem to work in these silos, in these little bubbles, right?
Starting at the macro level, policymakers are far removed from the classroom, and yet they're making decisions at the state and federal level that impact our schools, our teachers, our students, right? At the micro level, we're finding that special education teachers, general education teachers, they aren't working collaboratively. We're seeing them work pretty separately most of the time. Students and parents don't know much about their rights or the IEP, the Individualized Education Program process. When it comes to their learning environment, they're not sure about how things go, where we're not talking to one another. And so these silos result in miscommunication, misunderstandings, and a very clear absence of the voices that matter.
So we have the same goal. We want our students to do better. We want our students to succeed. And yet, we're all on different pages about how to get there because we all work in our own little bubbles. So, even when we look at conferences or different convenings even, many of these conferences have a target audience of mostly researchers, mostly teachers. When do we actually have all of these individuals in the same room? So this was why we thought it was important to bring people together: teachers, administrators, leaders in education. And when we say that, we mean researchers, people involved in education policy, students, parents, to bring all of them together in one room and discuss in real time, what are our pain points? What are we struggling with and why? To be able to identify exactly what's going on in our schools right now from all of these different perspectives to identify what we need to do better. Do we need to reinvent the wheel? Probably not. Maybe some things are actually going well. What areas do we need to change or refine, approach differently maybe? How do we move forward from here, right? So essentially, this convening created a giant think tank, if you will that included all of these different voices that are essential to, that are essentially brainstorming and problem solving our way through this.
Robert Balfanz (11:51.669)
Yeah, I was in the room that day and it was a very exhilarating experience that upon reflection it was like, well, that was, but why is that so rare? Because there was so much to be learned when around the table you have the students themselves, parents, teachers, researchers, and all who have different perspectives on the problem pooling their knowledge to figure out what we need to do. So let's move on to what was learned. I know you've organized the learnings and the challenges we need to overcome to enable of learning disability students in particular and students with disabilities more broadly to graduate high school ready for post-secondary success into three categories, mindsets, knowledge, and systems. So let's take them one at a time. Why are mindsets so important?
Saashya Rodrigo (12:40.546)
So what we found was that in our efforts to fix this system that is pretty broken, not doing what it's supposed to do, we're actually focusing on all of the wrong things. And we need to shift that mindset. So a classic example that was brought up quite a bit in our conversations at the convening - Our nation is experiencing a teacher turnover crisis, right? Teachers are quitting their jobs at alarming rates. What's our solution?
Hire people to fill those vacancies and quickly. No, it's not emergency hires that will fix the problem at its root. It's teacher retention. Let's appreciate, respect, and value the teachers who are doing a good job so that they stay in the profession. Let's make sure that they're supported. Let's make sure that they're moving forward with their teaching profession. It's teacher retention, and it's also talent acquisition.
So when we see these vacancies, let's hire teachers who meet the qualifications, who show potential. Lowering the criteria just to fill in vacancies is not a long-term solution. We need to shift that mindset. We're acting out of panic and short-term necessity rather than carefully considering the sustainable practices that put our students first.
Another example that was brought up at the convening. We have unrealistic expectations of our teachers and also of our students, right? Our teachers are overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, under-resourced, and above all, unheard, right? They're not being listened to. Same thing with our students. We're expecting them to do all of these things, get good grades, do their homework, excel in extracurricular activities, prepare for college. You know, in an ideal world, that might work. But guess what? Most of our underperforming schools have students who don't have the supports and resources to do all of these different things and excel at them. They don't have the parental support, the community supports, the appropriate living environment. In some cases, their basic needs are not being met. Add a potentially unidentified learning disability on top of it, and we're setting them up for failure with all of these different demands that we're putting on their shoulders.
Saashya Rodrigo (15:05.158)
Maybe we shouldn't be focusing so much on test scores. Maybe we need to slow down and think about what's right for the student. What is student success? What does it mean to be successful from their perspective? Does it always have to be high standardized test scores and college applications? Right? We're making decisions without truly understanding the individuals for whom these decisions are being made. We need to urgently shift our exclusionary deficit mindset into a growth mindset that fuels a holistic and effective true system of support.
Robert Balfanz (15:48.017)
I really like what you said there that we have to actually slow down and build a success system instead of just having rapid reactions driven by scarcity and stress, which just makes a bad system worse. We worked together, our mindsets organized on what really matters and slowing down to build from strength. But for that we need some knowledge, right? So that's your next category. Who needs to build or have access to what knowledge?
Saashya Rodrigo (16:23.618)
Right, so the individuals that we spoke to had a lot to say about skill gaps or knowledge gaps. So for instance, general educators felt unprepared to teach students with disabilities. They didn't know enough about learning disabilities to be able to truly, you know, hone into those challenges and those needs of those specific students. Special ed teachers, especially in high school, we found were unprepared or felt unprepared to teach general ed content from their special ed lens. Well, collaboration and co-teaching sounds nice in theory, right? But is it actually being implemented or practiced in reality? Very rarely, right?
We need to bridge these knowledge gaps. We're not expecting our teachers to be sort of jack of all trades. There's a reason we have all of these special ed teachers, we have gen ed teachers, we have speech language pathologists, we have counselors, et cetera. But we need to break down these walls and harness the expertise of those around us through high quality teacher preparation programs, targeted specific professional development sessions, systematic and purposeful collaboration efforts that truly take into consideration what teachers need against their workload and what's feasible for them. But it's not just teachers.
Policymakers need to expand their knowledge on what our classrooms are actually like. We need to advocate for realistic policies that are rooted in research and echo the needs of those at the core of this ecosystem. Similarly, researchers need to conduct research with feasible long-term goals in mind so that those research-based strategies or programs or interventions can be implemented feasibly and sustainably once those researchers and their grant funds exit the building, right?
We need to educate our parents and students on their rights and give them agency. That relationship needs to be a two-way street. Just like we educate them, they need to educate us, and we need to give them the opportunity to talk about their goals, their struggles, what's feasible for them, right? It's a joint effort. And to bridge this knowledge gap, we need to educate each other, we need to communicate transparently, we need to collaborate, and we need to advocate.
Robert Balfanz (19:02.933)
Yeah, very powerful, very powerful. So we're getting ourselves orientated towards the right questions and the right way to approach them, we're building our knowledge, but we still got a system, existing system on a new system we've got to create. So that becomes the big question, it's the third thing you talked about is really, how can we create a success system rather than a failure system?
Saashya Rodrigo (19:26.878)
Right, right. So once we've made that mindset shift, like you said, and kind of dedicated ourselves to bridging that knowledge gap, the system level change actually starts to fall into place pretty organically, right? We're seeing these cracks in the foundation of our existing system, right? Researchers, district leaders, policymakers, administrators, teachers, students, parents, all of these different parties are working in silos, right?
We're not communicating clearly or consistently. We're not collaborating effectively. We're not educating ourselves. And so all of these cracks in the foundation of this system, they start to get filled once we take those steps, those two first steps of shifting our mindset and bridging the knowledge gap, right? Now we can start refining the system. We can make it more student focused, more user-friendly for teachers and parents, more holistic, more realistic, right? We don't need to keep coming up with new systems every year. We don't need to sell an old system with new packaging. I'm sure you're very familiar with all of the new buzzwords that teachers get shoved down their throat. Trust me, our teachers are sick of it. We need to work with what we already have. It's there. We have the ingredients. We just need to refine that recipe. We need to change our mindset, educate, communicate, collaborate, advocate.
We need to refine and implement a system that is in touch with reality, right? That's intended for the real classroom and not for the perfect utopian classroom with all of the funding, all of the resources. We need to also recognize that our school climate is ever-changing, and that should be reflected in our systems that we implement, right? Our systems need to change as our demographics change, as our school climate change, as our needs and challenges change, right? And so that piece of it is really important as well. It's not just a, let's fix our mindsets, let's bridge the knowledge gap, let's create the system, we're done. It's ongoing, right? It's an ongoing process.
Robert Balfanz (21:45.741)
But the key thing is, it's an ongoing process. But the convening you held and others like that and the survey we're about to talk to in a minute are always giving us the sort of guidance we need to sort of create that new system, right? And the critical thing, as you keep saying, is that at the front of that are the people themselves that experience the system, the students, the parents, the teachers. We really need to find a way to have them front and center in the refiguring of the failure system to become a success system. And that really brings us into our next question, as well as sort of this puzzle that some of our readers might have, which is, we started out saying that students with disabilities still have some of the lowest graduation outcomes and high rates of chronic absenteeism and disciplinary actions and course failures.
Robert Balfanz (22:44.109)
And on the other hand, from 30,000 feet from folks that don't know much about the reality, you could look at it and say, but they have many of the things that people call for is central to personalized learning for all. They have individual education plans. They have specially trained educators. They have additional targeted resources. And so to me, this puzzle suggests that we don't know, even though we're learning more.
Robert Balfanz (23:11.245)
We still don't know enough about how students experience the existing system, you know, where it falls short, what's missing, right? Because to your point earlier, we're sort of looking at it at a too high a level, right? And in silos, so we have a limited viewpoint from a high level, which is giving us sort of incomplete information. And that is why I'm so excited about the next phase of NCLD's work with the Grad Partnership, which is a national survey of students with learning disabilities, including those who dropped out and those who considered dropping out but stayed in school. Can you tell us about the survey and what you're hoping to learn?
Saashya Rodrigo (23:47.226)
Yeah, we are very, very excited about this work. So as it stands, we definitely don't know enough about young adults and their experiences in high school, let alone their experiences with dropping out, right? So our goal with this is to survey 200 young adults with learning disabilities. And when we say young adults, we're talking about ages 18 through 24. And our goal is to learn more about their experiences and the factors that led them to either drop out of high school or think about dropping out of high school, right? So this survey looks at the reasons why individuals dropped out and how their learning disability might have played a role in that potentially, right? With regards to those who thought about dropping out but ended up staying on or pursuing an alternate pathway, we want to know more about what changed in their path? What ultimately pushed them to decide, hey, I'm gonna stay in school, or I'm going to get my GED, or follow an alternative pathway? We're specifically looking at factors relating to the little ABCs, the agency, belonging, connectedness piece because these are the prerequisites, if you will, to the bigger ABCs, right? The attendance, behavior, course grades, which are directly linked to graduation rates. So the survey launches in March, and we're really excited to finally hear the voices of our young adults, learn from our mistakes and our mishaps, and really put their voices at the center, front and center, of the decision-making table.
Robert Balfanz (25:30.345)
Yeah, it's going to be really, really exciting to see what they have to tell us. And as we anticipate those survey results, and also just the context of your opening about your own experience with high school and how it often wasn't that good, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on where our schools are currently falling short and creating agency, belonging, and connectedness among students with learning disabilities.
Saashya Rodrigo (26:03.174)
Right. So this goes back to kind of what we learned at the convening. And this was part of the reason why we had the convening. We wanted to identify exactly where we were falling short. We know that many of our students with disabilities do not have positive experiences with the little ABCs, myself included. And this ends up impacting those big ABCs. We know that students with disabilities drop out at over twice the rate as the non-disabled peers, right? We know that students with disabilities graduate at lower rates than their non-disabled peers. So let's look at those big ABCs, right? So attendance, for instance. We know that students with disabilities are twice as likely to be chronically absent, right? Behavior. Students with disabilities are twice as likely to receive out-of-school suspension. So between that chronic absenteeism and that out-of-school suspension and other related factors, you know, when you're not in your learning environment, you're not engaging, you're not learning, right? So you're losing that sense of community, that sense of belonging and connectedness, and above all, you're not learning, right? So knowing this, is it any wonder that 80% of students with significant learning disabilities struggle with language and reading, right? Which impacts all other core subject areas and ultimately leads to how well they do in school and whether or not they graduate in time or at all. So, we need to really think about how we measure the big ABCs and what leads up to that. Why are students chronically absent? Why are they receiving so many out of school suspensions? And is that the right consequence, if you will, or the most tactful way to go about things? We need to spend more time looking at the little ABCs, and we need to be purposeful and strategic in how we address students' sense of agency, belonging, and connectedness, right? We need to be proactive rather than reactive.
Robert Balfanz (28:16.009)
Yeah, and you know, absolutely, that's really like a core idea of student success systems, which we'll be talking about this whole year, which is that, you know, we know that the attendance behavior, course performance are things that are indicators that absent a change of learning environment or additional supports means there's significant odds that student will struggle and not graduate. But we often tend to focus like, OK, well, how are we going to come to school more often?
And really what we're learning is we have to take that step back, just like you said, and that shift the mindset and say, instead of just reacting to the signal, let's try to figure out what's causing the signal. And that really gets this idea of agency, belonging, and connectedness. That if you feel you're in a place where you have agency, where you feel you're in a place that you can belong, if you feel that you're in a place where you feel connected, that's a place that you'll fight to go to. Like you will like work hard to even push by past some obstacles. But...
Saashya Rodrigo (29:10.651)
Exactly, exactly.
Robert Balfanz (29:11.681)
But if you're in a place where you feel none of that, then oftentimes the logical thing is to stay away, right? And...
Saashya Rodrigo (29:20.279)
Right. And to add to that, let's make sure that our students feel welcome and valued in our classrooms, that their attendance matters. But even more than that, their presence, their engagement, their participation matters. Let's equip our schools with the appropriate personnel, with sufficient funding, with the right resources. Let's make sure that we're approaching this with the right mindset, with the relevant knowledge.
Robert Balfanz (29:34.165)
Well said. Yep. Absolutely. Yep.
Saashya Rodrigo (29:47.314)
And the student support system that is feasible, purposeful, and equitable so that our students feel like they belong.
Robert Balfanz (29:56.461)
Last question. We often hear these days about the importance of co-creation, of making improvements with those who will benefit, with making improvements with those who will benefit, not for them. Can you share any examples or observations you have had of how this leads to better solutions for students with learning disabilities, and all students, really?
Saashya Rodrigo (30:18.73)
Right, yeah, so we are certain about three things. One, our existing system is not working. Two, we don't have strong relationships across the board by working in our silos. And between these two points, we know that students are the ones who ultimately are at stake, right? Which brings me to the third point, which is that the more we put band-aids on situations that actually either need extensive surgery or more often than not, preventative care, if we're being proactive rather than reactive, the more this skill gap widens for our students.
If we think of this as a film reel, we start off with a student who says, let's say that they're struggling in reading at the elementary level. Perhaps they have undiagnosed dyslexia, but because they aren't a behavior problem just yet, they slide through the cracks.
Fast forward, now the student is getting to an age where they're noticing that they're falling behind. It's impacting all of their other academic coursework. Maybe their friends are starting to notice too. How do you think this makes the student feel when we think about those little ABCs? They continue to fall behind in reading, in math, in all of these core subject areas. And as the skill gap widens, this student starts feeling isolated, right? They don't feel like they belong anymore. They're starting to get bored. And so now you're seeing those behaviors pop up, right? So we start seeing the behavior issues. We start seeing attendance issues because they're trying to avoid or maybe they're receiving out of school suspension, and unsurprisingly, we see course grade issues. This turns into a risk of dropping out. We start seeing issues with graduation rates, right?
Saashya Rodrigo (32:11.666)
Inadequacies in addressing the issue at the core, or addressing factors that lead up to the issue before it even becomes an issue, is ultimately the recipe for failure, right? We're shooting ourselves in the foot by not being proactive. We end up creating this, I forget the word that you used, I think it was system of failure, was it? Yeah. Right, failure system, right.
Robert Balfanz (32:22.818)
Yeah.
Robert Balfanz (32:32.269)
Yeah, failure systems, yeah.
Saashya Rodrigo (32:41.73)
Their voices in our decision-making. We need to have students at the table, at the core of these systems that we're putting in place, of these bills that we're lobbying for, right? Simply by having students front and center, we are already being proactive about what they need to be successful. We're already making sure that their needs relating to those little ABCs are being met simply by putting them first right, conduct wellness surveys, have one-on-one conversations, ask them about what matters to them in terms of their future, right? Maybe college, in the traditional sense, isn't what they have in mind or what's feasible for their family. You know, as simple as it may sound though, all of this is certainly easier said than done. This is a tremendous undertaking, but it's certainly achievable.
We need to work collaboratively, right? It circles back to our convening findings, right? We need to educate one another, communicate transparently, advocate for our students and teachers, really get in touch with what's truly feasible and what's truly necessary and relevant, right? We need to understand that things are always changing, so we need to change with it. We need to think critically about how we're allocating funds, what policies we want to focus on, how to bridge the research to practice gap so that we have a system in place that promotes evidence-based instruction sustainably and equitably, right? We have a lot of work to do, but with collaboratives like the Grad Partnership, with the survey work that we're doing, with more convenings that include all voices, we can make this happen.
Robert Balfanz (34:28.629)
There's many things and we just said, but one thing just really stood out to me was this, you know, it's like a, it's a movie reel, which means there's a script. And if we know how the script's gonna play out, we know we have to change the script, right? And not just try to change the ending, we gotta change the whole script. So this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much, Saashya.
Robert Balfanz (34:54.865)
Is there anything else you would like to share or tell our audience about NCLD, and/or its work with the Grad Partnership to Spread Student Success Systems? Is there a website for our listeners to visit?
Saashya Rodrigo (35:05.722)
Yes, so we are on all the socials. You can also go to ncld.org. A survey for Grad Partnership launches in March, so keep an eye out for that. And, you know, we're really excited about these results. You'll definitely see it on the Grad Partnership website. And yeah, excited to see what comes out of this.
Robert Balfanz (38:42.229)
Wonderful, wonderful. In closing, a key feature of student success systems is to build a sense of school connectedness among all students. As we heard today, from Saashya herself, and as well as about students with learning disabilities, this is an area where our schools often fall short. Far too many middle and high school students say that no one knows them, no one cares, they don't feel welcome in school, and what they do in school has little meaning. One reason for this is we have not designed schools to provide them with the four key components of school connectedness.
These are having an adult in school who knows and cares about you as a person, a supportive peer group, engaging in meaningful activities that help others, and feeling welcome in school for who you are. Think about these for a moment. Did you have these in high school? How many of your students would say they have all these?
What we know from national surveys is they tell us that student success is centered in supportive human relationships, that we need to belong before we can achieve. We are excited to see what NCLD learns in its survey and how their work with the Grad Partnership and student success systems can lead to human-centered schools where students with disabilities thrive.
Robert Balfanz (36:44.137)
As we close, we want to ask you to please subscribe to Designing Education to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in the field. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a five-star review. Also, please share the show with a friend or colleague on social media.
This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center thanking everyone for listening and inviting you to listen to the other episodes in our Designing Education series wherever you listen to your podcasts. Onward and be well.