Breaking Down Barriers: How Student Success Systems Transform Support in Schools

In episode six, we welcome Jenny Scala, Managing Director at the American Institutes for Research. Jenny shares insights into how student success systems can help schools break down silos in student support, making it easier to use resources efficiently and deliver integrated, timely support for every student. We explore the inner workings of these systems, examining how they help schools identify students’ needs, improve attendance, boost engagement, and set up all students for success. We want every student to know that there is an adult who cares about them and misses them when they're not there. It's essential to continue training people on the importance of this work, especially as we face transitions in schools and buildings.

Transcript

Bob Balfanz (00:00):

Hello and welcome to season three of the Designing Education Podcast. Today we'll be talking to Jenny Scala, managing director of the American Institutes for Research. We'll be discussing how student success systems can enable schools to break down the silos of student support. And in so doing, to enable schools to better use the resources they have, to provide students with the integrated supports they need to succeed and thrive. We can't wait to start the conversation. Before we do, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Designing Education podcast and never miss an episode.

Bob Balfanz (00:41):

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 talking with Jenny Scala, managing director at the American Institutes for Research. It is the sixth episode of our third season of conversations we are having with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country. With them, we are talking about what it will take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on a pathway to adult success. This season, we are doing a deep dive on student success systems or how schools can better organize and deliver the support students need to succeed in pandemic impacted times. Today we're going to get into the nuts and bolts of how these student success systems work. We're going to examine how they provide schools a more impactful way to determine which students need which supports and when, to be able to attend school regularly, engage in meaningful learning, and do well in their courses in short to succeed at school. So, let's get into it. Welcome, Jenny. It's wonderful to have you here today.

Jenny Scala (01:48):

I'm excited to be here, Bob.

Bob Balfanz (01:49):

Wonderful. We start all our podcasts by asking our guests the same question. When you were in high school, what was a good day?

Jenny Scala (01:58):

A good day for me in high school was being able to start the day by hanging out at my friend's locker and just catching up on what had happened in the previous evening and afternoon since I had last seen her. And then I would, um, hope that throughout the day that I didn't have any pop quizzes or tests, and that I did okay with my homework. Um, I was definitely something of a nerd, uh, and really liked academics, but most of my day centered around band. Um, I played in band for all of high school, um, both marching band and then symphony band. So, um, most of my day really centered around that, but as I reflect, a good day was really more connected to the people I talked with and connected with good friends rather than the academics that might have been the priority of the day.

Bob Balfanz (02:52):

Yeah, that, that's really interesting how you frame that, right? That you were, you were interested in academics and you knew they were important, but like what was a good day was, was really the people and in some level the activity Right? So, it was really that, that combination, right. As opposed to just, I'm just here to do my, my academic work.

Jenny Scala (03:10):

Absolutely.

Bob Balfanz (03:11):

Uh, so let's start our conversation by hearing a little bit about the work the American Institutes for Research does with regards to student success systems.

Jenny Scala (03:20):

Yeah. So, AIR or American Institutes for Research, um, has been involved in student success systems and the prior conceptualization of those early warning systems, um, for a very long time. I actually was trying to think recently of about the first time we met, and I can't remember how long ago that was at this point. I know we've both been in this space for a while. When I started at AIR, one of the first projects that I was put on was a federally funded technical assistance center called the National High School Center and we were looking at existing research that was looking through data for high school students that had already graduated and looking through their data.  And this was research that you and others had done to see like if there were ways of identifying which students might be displaying symptoms of risk of not graduating high school in their first year of high school or in their middle school grades, with the idea being that we really needed to support and provide supports for students so that they could make sure that they were graduating on time. So, we started that work at AIR back in 2008, I believe.

Bob Balfanz (04:37):

Yeah, that's, that's what I thought was, there was something with a zero, a two and a zero <laugh> before.

Jenny Scala (04:43):

Yeah, and I think it was 2008. I think that's also when I started AIR. So, I feel like it was probably, and I started in the fall, so I think it was earlier that year, when we really started digging into it. So as an organization, we've been doing this work since 2008 and started with kind of taking yours and others research and translating that into, um, an Excel tool actually that was free that we disseminated. 

Bob Balfanz (05:09):

I remember that.

Jenny Scala (05:09):

Yeah. And we did a,

Bob Balfanz (05:11):

The great high school tracker,

Jenny Scala (05:12):

It was, and we pushed Excel to its limits back in 2008. And so, we did a tremendous number amount of kind of whatever we could do to disseminate this tool. And simultaneously why we were kind of hitting the virtual roadshow of talking about this tool. We were also doing some pilots in a couple of states with high schools, with their states, uh, education agency staff that were interested in supporting this work to just see how, how it went in terms of piloting and using this. And the tool was pretty simple. And in fact, that was part of what the beauty of the tool was, is that it was using available data that schools already had, and that most of the time was pretty easy for them to kind of upload into this tool. Uh, and we provided support for that. And then literally there was this little flag icon that would pop up for, um, students that were displaying symptoms of risk of not graduating high school in time.

Jenny Scala (06:10):

So simultaneously, there was a lot of effort that was happening around school improvement and high schools, and our hope was that this tool was going to be embedded into some of the other school improvement work that was ongoing as another resource or another way of looking at things. And what we found is that people weren't doing that for whatever reason, and I have my my assumptions about what those were, but what we heard in our pilots, when we were piloting, is the request for how do I use this tool in a broader framework? Um, because otherwise what we were worried and what schools were worried about was that that students might be identified of not graduating high school on time, but not necessarily receiving quick supports and following up on those supports to make sure that those symptoms of risk were reducing over time. Uh, and so from there, we created our seven-step implementation process, um, that uses a tool.

Jenny Scala (07:07):

We don't care what tool it is, just use a tool to help quickly identify which students are displaying symptoms of risk. And so, that kind of capitulated us into and launching, uh, the seven-step process. And then we did a lot of implementation support around that. We were able to do an impact study on using that seven-step process after one academic year in high schools in the Midwest, and were able to show statistically significant impact, um, for reducing chronic absenteeism and course failures. And we just have continued doing the work ever since that time in growing with our understanding of what schools need, what local context says, and quite frankly, 2008 was a while ago. So, we've also evolved in our thinking, um, pre pandemic. And

Bob Balfanz (07:58):

It doesn't always feel like it was, but it - it was <laugh>.

Jenny Scala (08:00):

It was, yeah, definitely was. So yeah, we've been able to just kind of expand from there. Yeah.

Bob Balfanz (08:04):

What's, what's very interesting, you know, when you said that, you know, when you initially conceived of it, the tool as being part of a larger high school reform efforts. And what's so interesting about that is when we did our work on early warning systems, initially it was coming out from a whole school improvement framework, and we were, and one of the things that got us to it is we found that you could do lots of good whole school reform and still have 20, 30, 40% of your kids not succeeding. You made big improvements. It used to be 50, 60, 70% not succeeding. So, in a way that was real progress, but there were still many kids still falling through the cracks. And you're right, the psychology is that it was always meant to be integrated in those larger efforts, but somehow people wanted to sort of separate out, like keeping kids on track to graduation and having a really good school to go to when really they were, the intention was, and their strength is when they're put together. Right? And not as like two separate problems, but they're part of the same challenge.

Jenny Scala (09:02):

Yep, absolutely. And some of that, I think too is this was about the time where people were also starting to disaggregate data in terms of looking at groups of students and how groups of students were doing. So that might have been part of it too.

Bob Balfanz (09:16):

Let's go a little deeper and talk about, again, some of this evolution of student success systems out of this work that you and I both did, that you've now established from the 00s onward. So, we know that over the past 20 years, there's been a number of efforts to improve student supports, and each has come with its own acronym, right? So PBIS, which is Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports, and that really arose to provide schools an alternative sort of punitive responses for behavior and zero tolerance approaches. And then the early warning and on track work you just talked about was really this idea - was supposed to be an integrated with this high school improvement, but also was about how you keep kids on track to high school graduation. And then along the way, we've had RTI, response to interventions, and MTSS, multi-tiered systems of support, which initially was often about, you know, reducing special ed referrals, but then came to be a more generalized approach to academic supports. And then in addition, schools might have an attendance team, a wellbeing team, a general student support team. They have a lot of teams and a lot of student support meetings. So, my question is what are some of the challenges with this approach? Because after all, doesn't specialization often lead to greater expertise?

Jenny Scala (10:29):

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this recently, and I truly believe that part of this effort was recognizing without maybe explicitly being able to say it, but recognizing the need for all of those different facets and aspects to be addressed in terms of supporting students, particularly making sure that students were graduating high school graduation and graduating high school on time. In my thinking about this, I've gone back to this kind of crystal-clear moment I have even earlier than the 2008, since we've been working together.  I was in, uh, a New England state around the same time where school improvement was really coming to be, and it was one of the smaller New England states. And I was facilitating a meeting at the state education agency, and it was a school improvement person, and then there was someone from all the different kind of other areas that impacted and touched school improvement.

Jenny Scala (11:24):

So high school graduation was there, content standard folks were there, teacher licensing, recruitment, professional development, was there like multilingual representation was there. And at some point, around this meeting, the person who was responsible for school improvement simply said, I know I'm the only person that's title is school improvement, and this is a new position, but I can't do it without every other person sitting around this table with me. This is not just my responsibility, it's everybody's responsibility. And so, as I think about the kind of idea of specialization and those different kind of silos, if you will, of kind of funding streams is really what a lot of that came from, is there was a different funding stream for each of those frameworks. And we have a colleague that often talks about, like, there's no kind of specific funding stream for like how to do systems change and how to braid all these streams together.

Jenny Scala (12:24):

There's an aspect of needing specialization, but sometimes I think we got too specialized, and you know, that good old kind of saying of we missed the forest from the trees. And, and I think that that was one of the unintended consequences of that, of there is a need for specialization, um, because there's aspects of expertise within each of those frameworks. But what we really need is this comprehensive way of looking at things and supporting what's going on in schools and the recognition of, you know, students have complex needs that yes, there's an academic aspect that might need to be addressed, but there's also this more like holistic, I went to high school and looked forward to connecting with my friends and my time in band. And so that, that doesn't fall under any of those silos or those frameworks necessarily. But that might be kind of what holds everything together.

Jenny Scala (13:21):

And so, as I think about student success systems, one of the things that I really appreciate is that there is space for each one of those expertise in terms of knowing that we need those, but that what the student needs or the school needs are might need to really leverage the strengths of each of those without saying we're only doing one.

Bob Balfanz (14:05):

Yeah, I mean, when, when I think about it, you know, it's like the, the, the full adage of like expertise - specialization leads to greater expertise, which leads to greater outcomes. The rest of that sentence is until it becomes over overwhelmed by coordination costs.

Jenny Scala (14:20):

Absolutely.

Bob Balfanz (14:20):

And I think that's what's happened, right? Is that each of these groups were focusing on their area and developing expertise, but students, as you said, are holistic on many parts. It's rare to be a student that my only issue is behavior. I come to school every day, I do great in school, I feel connected to everybody, but I still have a behavior challenge, right? It's much more the case that those things are interconnected and by bringing them together in a student success system, right, we can bring all that expertise together, but the coordination is happening simultaneously, right? So, it's trying to have that, that, that knowledge, but also in a way that we, we only have to have one meeting instead of having all three of us, the behavior person, the academics, the attendance person, all talk about the same student in different meetings. Um, we can just have one meeting or we, we combine all those elements and that's really the crux of the idea.

Jenny Scala (15:10):

Yeah. And I, I mean, to build off that, I think back to a meeting that we held, um, together in, uh, last fall where we literally had representation from over 30, I believe, districts across the eastern time zone of the country. And we asked them to raise their hand if they had, you know, one to two meetings or, or how many meetings of these different kind of frameworks they had. And we had people saying that their schools had over five meetings, just to build on your point, where they might be talking about the same student in five meetings, but not holistically because there is not like, one, that doesn't serve the student's needs the best. And two, there is not time in the day to have all those meetings. Um, and we want like that recognition of really what is going to better serve the student and also realistically able for the adults in the building to do successfully.

Bob Balfanz (16:05):

So, I want to just, uh, dig deeper a little bit into some of these, uh, a couple of these different student support efforts. Um, when you survey principals and ask, what do you call your student support effort, the most common answer is we call it MTSS or multi-tiered systems of support. So how do student success systems build on and add value to an MTSS effort?

Jenny Scala (16:28):

Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think part of this is also, um, goes back to sort of the, the kind of origin story for multi-tiered systems of support. So what we saw, uh, and what we saw pretty common throughout the country was that MTSS started focusing on elementary schools and then the district would see some really positive gains and would come up with some policy saying, well, we're gonna push this K 12. And every year they kind of added on another grade that they were doing their MTSS work in. And then when they got to ninth grade, there was almost this kind of complete record scratch of people being like, well, that doesn't apply to me. High school is different. And I was working both on the National High School Center at this time as well as the Center on Response to Intervention and was often talking with communities across the country saying, well, you're early, like these indicators that we hav,e for if a student is displaying symptoms of not graduating high school on time, think about those as your screening.

Jenny Scala (17:30):

And so basically what I would do is take the core components of multi-tiered systems of support and map them to student success systems. What data are you using? How are you making sure that we know who's displaying symptoms of risk? What group of adults in the school are responsible for having conversations about these data and making sure that students are getting the supports and the interventions and the strategies that address their underlying needs? And really, really thinking about that in terms of really centering students in all of this rather than this work happening to students but involving students in that process. We often talk about how positive relationships are something that we sort of knew we needed, but we didn't understand how critical they were until the pandemic when we no longer had them. And so that's a part that I really value student success systems being explicit about because it resonates with people right now. They understand that and they are seeing quick wins, which we also know is important when we're doing this work, if we're really talking and focusing people in terms of examining the positive relationships that exist in their school.

Bob Balfanz (18:57):

So, yeah, you know, I think that really gets to the heart of like, if I'm a principal and I say, well, I have a good MTSS team, what more would my student success team do? I think what you're really getting at, right, is that one thing, is this upfront focus on do you have good relationships between your students and your school staff, between students and students, between your school and your families? Because we've just learned to appreciate how foundational that is for academic success, for wellbeing, for attendance. Um, it's sort of like that universal protective, uh, feature, right? Is having these strong relationships. So that I think is one key difference. And then, you know, another too, is a little bit is that, is that if you look at very modern definitions of MTSS, it's very close to student success teams, but the MTSS a lot of teachers learned was a slightly different version of that.

Bob Balfanz (19:44):

It was like, use a universal screener and whoever's identified on that universal screener, then put them in a tier of intervention and they sort of stay there. It's, you know, it was a little bit stagnant, right? And the whole idea of student success systems is to be, you know, is to be looking weekly or biweekly at a whole range of predictive and, and holistic indicators and being very, you know, uh, proactive and preventative and sort of almost ever, you know, as needed changing in what you're doing, right? So, there's I think, a little bit more of a dynamic feature to a student success team as well.

Jenny Scala (20:20):

Yeah, and I think this is part of like the difference of MTSS in elementary versus secondary schools because when we were talking with, um, staff in high schools, they understood the, the complexity of not monitoring students and, and that flexibility of students moving in and out of interventions, which required people to think about the kind of overall high school schedule, which we know is really hard to touch, but it required people to think differently about, well, if we had an intervention block, then students could move around based on their needs and they weren't assigned to a specific intervention for an entire quarter or a semester when they might not need it. And so, I think that was, that was really important for people to, to unpack what that meant in high school and to be creative in terms of thinking about how to, again, center students rather than maybe the other systems that were really designed to center the adults in the building. 

Bob Balfanz (21:21):

Yeah, that's a great point. So, let's go talk a little bit more about this evolution, sort of from early warning or early warning intervention and monitoring or on-track systems. The folks of us has done this work all call them, I'll call the same thing a slight variation, but basically it was the idea of using predictive indicators across, you know, attendance behavior, course performance, and sort of a tiered response system, right? Get, you know, queued to keeping kids on the path to high school graduation. And as we said, you and I have worked many, many years on this. So, the question is, what, what brought us, uh, to work with the other organizations in the Grad Partnership to evolve this early warning on track work into student success systems?

Jenny Scala (22:01):

I think, I mean, you and I have talked about this, and so I think we knew pre-pandemic that we were not meeting the needs of all of our students, and particularly those students that were in areas that might not have been as well-resourced as other locations. And I think we used the pandemic almost as a disruption point to think about how to really better serve our students and all students, but really focusing on those students that had not historically been, been getting their needs met at school through the structures that we already had in place. And I think there was an awareness factor that really happened during the pandemic of being able to step back and realize who was getting served and who wasn't. And so really using that as a, as a catalyst to help move our thinking forward. And I think also, you know, right, maybe not right before, but soon before the pandemic a report came out where a survey had been done by the US Department of Education to high school principals. And one of the questions in there was, or maybe there were a couple of questions that asked about their use of like early warning systems, and I think 50 or about 50, or maybe even higher. Maybe it was somewhere between 50 and

Bob Balfanz (23:25):

Maybe it was like 70%.

Jenny Scala (23:26):

Was it 70? I wanna say 70. But that just seemed too high. Yeah, I know. Um, so I mean, so 70% of principals, high school principals said that they were already using an early warning system. And so that was a, that was a shock to those of us that have been doing this work because we, we know that if, if 70% of the principals in schools were really using these systems, our outcomes would be different. And so, there was a mismatch. And so, I also think it became an opportunity for us to kind of really think about what we want to call it, uh, and also be more asset based in our framing of this work, rather than kind of the siren approach that early warning systems triggers and makes people think about like student success systems, who doesn't want students to be successful? I firmly believe everyone in education wants students to be successful.

Jenny Scala (24:17):

And so, I think this asset framing also helps give some space for people to pause and really reflect on what's working and capitalize on what's working and expand that, rather than having this kind of, um, fast response of emergency that everyone's kind of, you know, really focused on one thing and paying attention to that really quickly. And then like, okay, we put the fire out, now we need to move on to something else. And so, I think this framing gives us a space for long-term paying attention to it rather than this being just one more thing.

Bob Balfanz (24:53):

Yeah, no, absolutely. And the one other thing I think was part of this evolution from early warning to student success systems, and you, and it was sort of sparked by that thing of a lot of people, yeah, we're doing this and then we're saying, are you, are you really doing it? 

Jenny Scala

Yeah. 

Bob Balfanz

You know, from the beginning, and you talked about this, the idea of early warning or on track systems was early identification of students who need supports and then taking sort of a tiered approach to that, right? Rather, you know, what, what could we do with prevention? What could we do for small groups? What, what needs to be customized? But in practice, a lot of that attention went right to that customization. And partly that was because it was so powerful. We were bringing together oftentimes because these teams involved, you know, grade level, uh, teachers across different subjects.

Bob Balfanz (25:37):

You know, all of a sudden you had 10 adults trying to figure out one kid, which was a huge change from many schools where you would have before one counselor or one social worker with a caseload of 200 kids trying to figure out by themselves.  Right.  How to help 200 kids. Now, you suddenly had 10 adults pulling their insights on one kid. That was very powerful. And it's a very important part of the methodology, but it almost overtook the whole system, right? That, that excitement of like, we can really pool our insights and make a difference in a kid's life, was great, but, in their meetings they could only get through four or five kids and there was 200 kids needing help. 

Jenny Scala (26:15):

Right. Exactly.

Bob Balfanz (26:16):

And, and that's really another thing why we were trying to think about how do we get people thinking about this very strategic approach to, to supporting kids not just going immediately to the customized solution.

Jenny Scala (26:26):

I think the other thing is, while that work, and doing that customization is hard, that is easier than people really stopping to say, what do we need to do to our universal or tier one, um, kind of supports and what would those look like? When I would bring that up prepandemic, I would always get the response of, well, we're using this curriculum. And I'm like, well, that's not what tier one supports are like. Um, and that that is what your instruction is. Absolutely. But there are still the ability to have these kind of universal supports that benefit all. And that's also where I think postpandemic, we're seeing the triangle kind of get flipped on its head in terms of, or whatever way you want to talk about it. Just the number of students who, even if you're thinking about attendance are not participating in school, you can't do that customization when your chronic absenteeism rates are, you know, over 40%.

Bob Balfanz (27:36):

So, all right, this sounds good. This evolution to student success systems seems, you know, like it's, it's going to help us move forward in real ways, but let's talk implementation or how do we get from this, you know, theory to practice? Um, and we know that student success systems involve both data systems and human systems and both have their challenges. So, let's start with data and data systems. What are some of the challenges student success teams face in getting the data they need to continually progress monitor all their students on key indicators, including attendance, academics, and wellbeing, and also track and analyze their actions and interventions over time?

Jenny Scala (28:12):

Well, I think we could probably do a session just on this question alone, <laugh>, um, because there's so much.

Bob Balfanz (28:18):

We could, we could. This is, this is the highlights <laugh>.

Jenny Scala (28:22):

So, I think part of this, um, goes back to in some ways, how these data systems are kind of implemented even at the district. So, these are often reports or widgets or add-ons or some sort of terminology that's kind of, of that sort, but part of the school and district's student information system or their SIS.  And so oftentimes, the person that is responsible for the student information system doesn't necessarily know or have the expertise, or even the training, or even the voice of the people that are using this information to know what best outputs and what those graphs could be and how to get those to the right people in timely manners. Oftentimes, those are kind of automated. You can press a button and get that information or kind of navigate to the right tab and get that information. But I think one of the benefits to the information system is there's all of this data in one place.

Jenny Scala (29:29):

That's also a challenge because it's kind of like, how do I know where to start? And even when you have these kind of specific add-ons, it's still really overwhelming for people to know what to use and how to use it. And, I would also say one of the changes we've seen since the pandemic is there used to be more third party vendors that would have this as like a different resource. So, it required another login, another landing page. And so, there were some barriers of implementation kind of uptake just because it wasn't in the same spot as some other information. And we know even from our own kind of outside of professional use, the more that I have to go to multiple sites to do something or click more buttons, the less likely I am to get to what I really wanted when I started.

Bob Balfanz (30:17):

There's a big debate, is it the two click or three click rule? If it's two clicks, will you do it or can you get you, can we get you to three, you know, <laugh>.

Jenny Scala (30:24):

Exactly. And I was thinking that, yeah, yeah. Can we get you to three and how many carrots do we need to offer to go from two to three? Absolutely, yes. Right. And some of these require, you know, 10 plus. And so that's, that was just a challenge. And some of these were really helpful for that kind of broad-brush stroke information. And it was the first time that like information had been displayed in great easily to use graphs. But again, it was almost siloed in terms of thinking about here's my information around attendance, and here what it might be for course performance, and here's what it might be within even course performance, my math grades, my ELA grades, but not necessarily creating a bigger holistic picture. And kind of being able to use that more holistic picture where I could get not just information about an individual student because that was a little bit easier, but to be able to look at groups of students, whether it was grades, whether it was, this specific teacher's 10th grade class in period three, how were they doing, um, that more holistic or kind of even specialized data were harder to get.

Jenny Scala (31:35):

And so that kind of fed us back into that we can look at, it was easier for us to look at specific individual students and having those 10 adults figure out what supports that specific student needed rather than really looking at the groups of students. And we know that we need to move groups of students coming out of the pandemic as well as individual students, but we really need to start with those groups of students. So, I think some of that kind of originally was how many clicks and am I getting the right data and do I believe the data? Um, I have been involved in countless conversations where, where teams would be like, I don't believe that attendance data. I know that's not right. And then they don't trust anything else that the system is giving them.  So that's also a factor as well.

Bob Balfanz (32:20):

Yeah, I mean it's sort of a, you know, the, there's so much complexity added of the system because when we think about it, all of the data originates in the school. They're the ones keeping track of attendance, they're the ones putting in course grades and assessments. They're the ones putting in wellbeing observations or behavior comments. And then it goes from there to the district or from the district to the state, and then maybe from the state back to the district and back to the school. Yep. And that's where all those errors can get in. And also, a big time lag, right? You people in the school know like, wow, last week was a really tough week for us and we're looking from data from like six weeks ago. 

Exactly.

Bob Balfanz (32:54):

How is that supposed to help us? Right? So, and we know there's efforts underway to improve upon this, but it's just one of those things that like, it seems like that this should be there, but there's still a lot of work that has to be done for it to really be there.

Jenny Scala (33:07):

I was going to say, I also feel like it's kind of like every time everyone upgrades their phone, right? They're excited about it, but then they're like, wait a minute, I now need to go figure out all these other things that I used to know how to do. And it's technology, so it continues to evolve. And so, we also need to plan for the ongoing implementation support of how to use these platforms,

Bob Balfanz (33:27):

Right. 

And that's where everyone decides like, that's where we can save money. Yep. And it, that doesn't turn out well, which brings me to AI, will that solve these challenges? Do you see a day when the work of student success teams becomes automated?

Jenny Scala (33:40):

I'm excited for the time when certain aspects will be automated. I think that there is the capability for AI to help identify those trends in groups of students that might need additional supports, because that takes a lot of time to do that. 

Indeed.

And there's a lot of data. So, I think there will be aspects where AI can make, uh, make the work easier for humans. And I look forward to that time. I don't think we're going to get to the point where we're going to have AI solving all of this. We know that and, and AI will continue to evolve. We know that.  Right now, I don't think AI is smart enough to be able to really take the whole process of student success teams. So, like, I don't think AI is going to, you know, mean that adults in the schools that are doing student success team work will no longer need to do it. I just hope that AI is able to make and allow the adults to be more efficient so that they're able to see the benefits of their conversations about groups of students and to see those quick wins faster and with more groups of students rather than individual students.

Bob Balfanz (35:03):

Yeah. Fully agree. Fully agree. Let's, let's finish then on the human side. Uh, human insight and action are the ultimate drivers of student success systems. Also, as I say, they're also the fastest, right? Even AI is going to still have a time lag of when the data was put in that it's looking at, the person that's going to know the best thing that, wow, that student looks different today is going to be the first adult who comes across them in the school building, right? So, what are we learning about what is essential and what is flexible in terms of organizing humans to operate powerful student success systems?

Jenny Scala (35:36):

One of the things that really kind of is the first thing that comes to mind when I think about this is that we need to continue to protect time for adults in the building to have these conversations. Often there is every intent of protecting that time, and then, um, people get pulled for covering as a substitute for covering for other needs. And we really need to prioritize this time for adults so that they can have those conversations. I also think we need to continue to make sure that all adults in the building, and not just teachers, but all adults in the building, understand the importance of those positive relationships. I've heard from many schools across the country where some of the most positive relationships that brought students into school were not the educators, but they were the other adults in the building. That's okay, that's wonderful.

Jenny Scala (36:34):

We want every student to know that there is an adult that cares about them and that misses them when they're not there. And I think that that is something that's really important to, to continue to train folks on the importance of doing that work because we're going to continue to have transitions in schools and in school buildings. So, we can't say, well, we got that training two years ago, so like we've checked that box. We can always go deeper in our relationships and be kind of refreshed, kind of what's happening. We also know that there are some demographic shifts that are happening in schools. So, making sure that adults really understand the culture and context in which different groups of students might be entering their building to be really able to relate and to empathize and to again, be that positive relationship that they need.

Bob Balfanz (37:26):

Absolutely. Uh, this has been a great conversation. Thank you, Jenny. Is there anything else you'd like to share or tell our audience? Are there websites for our listeners to visit or a resource to explore?

Jenny Scala (37:37):

We have some free resources on AIR's website. Uh, if you go to air.org, you have to search for it. Uh, I think our URL is pretty long, but we do have a page and some resources that are available there. And you know, I'm just, I just really hope people continue to think about how to make sure that we are supporting this work long term to benefit all students and to benefit all adults that are supporting our education system at every level.

Bob Balfanz (38:06):

Yeah, I mean here, here, right? This, this is, this is long-term work. This is not a quick fix for pandemic times. It's really about making sure all our kids have the supports they need to succeed and thrive in school and, and, and to have a pathway to adult success, right? As they move from high school to post-secondary, uh, schooling or training.

Jenny Scala (38:26):

I was gonna say - Absolutely. And I think that last point that you said about kind of continuing this work in terms of making sure that as students are ready for careers and, and additional training or kind of, uh, educational opportunities that we expand this work as well.

Bob Balfanz (38:44):

So, in closing, today we went into the weeds to learn how to create the systems and conditions we need to provide our students with the supports they need to succeed and thrive in school. We have heard how student success systems provide a means to improve upon the patchwork system of student supports we have developed over the past 20 years. Student needs are holistic and ever evolving. Schools are currently devoting substantial resources to address them, but too often and in uncoordinated and fragmented ways that both frustrate and exhaust the adults providing them and underserve the students needing them. As we heard today, instead of having many small student support efforts, we need to create a student success system, which unifies and extends them. So, the same total effort will lead to better results. To do this, we need to continue to collectively work to enable student success teams at the school level, to have access to real time actionable attendance, academic and wellbeing data, and a human response system, which draws on the insights of teachers, students, parents, and the community.

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 education. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a five-star review. Also, please share the show with a friend or colleague or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center. Thanking everyone for listening today. I invite you to listen to other episodes of our Designing Education series wherever you listen to your podcasts, onward and be well.