Girls in our nation’s urban areas—and in communities across the county—face significant challenges on the path to academic achievement and adult success. That’s why the work of Girls Inc. of Chicago is so inspiring. Since 1865, Girls Inc. has  harnessed the power of youth helping youth, and they are redefining what support can look like.

Each year, nearly 8 million high school juniors and seniors in the U.S. could be tapped as youth leaders, mentors, tutors, or success coaches. Imagine the impact if even a fraction took on these roles—millions more young people empowered to help their peers succeed, while building their own leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills.

In this episode, Yani Mason, Chief Executive Officer of Girls Inc. of Chicago speaks with Dr. Robert Balfanz about how near-peer supports are transforming communities, strengthening school connectedness, and driving both academic and personal growth. You’ll learn about best practices and how engaging in pro-social activities creates a ripple effect of empowerment.

Connections to help girls become the best versions of themselves and reach their fullest potential.

What does it really take to help all students plan for what’s next after high school? In this episode of Designing Education, Dr. Robert Balfanz speaks with Andy Schmitz, senior managing director of system impact at OneGoal, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping students navigate their postsecondary journeys.

The discussion also explores how improved access to post-secondary outcomes data, leadership networks, and innovative partnerships can help schools provide timely, informative, and actionable post-secondary guidance that help put all their students on real pathways to success.

Don’t miss this insightful conversation about transforming high school post-secondary guidance into a powerful tool that supports all students.

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Links to Additional Resources: 

• Measurement for Mobility
• Carnegie Classifications
• KY Futuriti 
• OneGoal Quality Enrollment
• National Student Clearinghouse StudentTracker

Season 4 of the Designing Education Podcast kicks off with Shawn Morris, Executive Director of the Mark Armijo Academy located in the South Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

This episode explores how the Mark Armijo Academy is helping students take ownership of their futures through internships and work-based learning. The conversation touches on the changing landscape of work, the decline of traditional career pathways, and the urgent need for schools to adapt by offering students meaningful exposure to modern opportunities.

This episode sets the tone for a season focused on innovative approaches to education, featuring leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country who are working to create systems that truly support all learners on their path to adult success. 

Listen now and subscribe to the Designing Education Podcast for powerful conversations with education leaders across the country.

In the season finale of Designing Education and our yearlong exploration of student success systems, we sit down with Paolo DeMaria, president and CEO of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), to explore how we can transform our nation’s high schools to meet the needs and opportunities of the 21st century and how student success systems can play a key role in this transformation. From building stronger relationships to using predictive indicators for progress monitoring, these systems offer a blueprint for schools to better support every student.

This conversation builds on our previous episode with Tim Knowles of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, diving deeper into how high schools can shift from credit based to learning based, from reactive to proactive student supports, co-creating new designs with educators, students and families. Tune in for a thought-provoking conversation on transforming high schools to better serve every student!

In episode seven of Designing Education, Tim Knowles, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, joins Dr. Robert Balfanz for a thought-provoking discussion about the evolving role of American high schools. This episode examines the urgent need to redesign high school education to meet the demands of today’s world, focusing on preparing students for modern opportunities and challenges, creating smoother transitions to post-secondary education or training, and empowering families to make informed decisions.

The discussion sheds light on a critical issue: the sharp decline in college enrollment among the Class of 2024. This cohort, shaped by a disrupted high school experience during the pandemic—virtual learning in ninth grade, increased absenteeism in tenth grade—now questions the relevance of traditional education.

Far from being a temporary setback, this trend signals concerns for the future. Educational attainment remains essential, with profound connections to health, civic engagement, and economic prosperity. This episode is a call to action for educators, leaders, families, and communities to collaborate in reimagining high schools and postsecondary transitions, ensuring students are equipped to thrive in today’s rapidly changing world.  

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.

In this episode, we welcome Taylor McCabe-Juhnke, Executive Director of the Rural Schools Collaborative, to discuss the work they are doing to bring student success systems to rural schools across the nation. 

With one in four of our nation's students attending rural schools, it's crucial that these often-overlooked communities are included in national improvement efforts.  Taylor will share how the Collaborative is helping empower these schools by connecting them through local intermediary organizations, fostering dynamic learning communities that not only strengthen student success in rural areas but also generate innovative solutions with the potential to reshape education across the country. 

In this special episode of Designing Education, we're thrilled to welcome Krys Payne as our guest host. Krys is the Executive Director of the UChicago Network for College Success (NCS) and brings nearly 30 years of experience in education to her role. At NCS, Krys leads a team dedicated to equipping educators with evidence-based practices and research to positively impact key indicators that predict high school graduation and college success. 

Krys is joined by Megan Hougard, Chief of College and Career Success for Chicago Public Schools (CPS).  She plays a vital role in developing the district’s high school strategy. Her work ensures that CPS students have the necessary support to succeed beyond high school. Megan’s vision includes multiple postsecondary pathways, enabling students from every Chicago neighborhood to pursue careers aligned with their passions. 

In this fourth episode of our third season, Krys and Megan will engage in a conversation about building school communities where students feel connected every day and explore how educators can create pathways to success that are inclusive and impactful.  Join us for an insightful discussion that promises to inspire and inform educators and leaders alike. 

In the third episode of season three, Tara Madden, Chief Program Officer of Talent Development Secondary, joins Dr. Robert Balfanz to discuss the four essential components of a student success system: a focus on building relationships; holistic data and predictive indicators; a response system informed by students, teachers, and families; and a shared set of student-centered mindsets among adults and what it takes to provide all students with the supports and learning experiences they need to thrive in post-pandemic times.  Madden shares several examples of recent school visits and discusses what’s taking place, how they are designing student success systems, and their impact on agency, belonging, and connectedness.

Talent Development Secondary is one of nine partnering organizations that works with the GRAD Partnership. The coalition is a national initiative that partners with communities to implement high-quality student success systems so that schools are better equipped to address the scale and scope of post-pandemic student needs and graduate all students ready for the future. The GRAD Partnership works directly with schools, districts, and local community organizations to create the conditions needed to bring the use of evidence-based student success systems from a new practice to common practice. 

In the second episode of season three, Patricia Balana, Managing Director of the GRAD Partnership, joins Dr. Robert Balfanz to discuss how and why nine organizations came together to form the GRAD Partnership. The coalition is a national initiative that partners with communities to implement high-quality student success systems so that schools are better equipped to address the scale and scope of post-pandemic student needs and graduate all students ready for the future. The GRAD Partnership works directly with schools, districts, and local community organizations to create the conditions needed to bring the use of evidence-based student success systems from a new practice to common practice.

As part of the conversation, Patricia shares examples of their work to develop and spread student success systems. She also discusses the initial results of the GRAD Partnership’s efforts and how student success systems are reducing chronic absenteeism rates and course failures.

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. 

Season three of Designing Education, a podcast hosted by Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, is about to begin!

This season’s series will focus on exploring student success systems, the next generation of early warning, on-track, and multi-tiered system of supports, which aim to integrate and increase the impact of existing student support efforts. Dr. Balfanz will host education leaders and practitioners to discuss what it will take to design our schools so they are places everyone wants to be, and all students are put on a pathway to adult success. 

Whether you’re a researcher, education advocate, teacher, school leader, district leader, or education reformer, we hope you’ll join us!  And if you like the podcast, help us spread the word by using the hashtag #DesigningEducation on social media. 

In Season 2, Episode 8, Sofia Russo, Principal of High School for Media and Communications located in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City joins Robert Balfanz for a conversation about what is possible when school leaders, teachers, students, families and community members are given opportunities to engage in school redesign. With just a little support and structure, Media and Communications has instituted practices to incorporate wisdom from the perspectives of their full-school community resulting in a school where everyone wants to be. As a result, learning and opportunities for post-secondary success expands.

In Season 2,  episode 7  Graham Wood, Director of the Office of Graduate Success, at the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce joins Robert Balfanz for a conversation about how high school graduation requirements and the very design of high schools can be re-imagined so that all students graduate high school on a pathway to adult success.

The great American high school of the 20th century enabled more people than in any other nation in the world to obtain secondary education from 1920 to 1970. Standardization helped high schools scale secondary education around a common experience, that was recognizable, from high school to high school.

But the world is very different in 2023 than it was in 1970, and high schools, have a different role to play.  This requires quality and customization. Ohio is showing the way and we look forward to learning, what it learns.

Celebrating its one-year anniversary, the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS), a partnership between the U.S. Department of Education, AmeriCorps, and the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center, was launched following a call to action from the Biden-Harris Administration for more Americans to serve as tutors, mentors, college/career advisors, student success coaches, and integrated student support coordinators to provide young people with supportive learning environments and experiences that will support them to recover from the impacts of the pandemic and thrive.

In Season Two’s sixth episode, Cindy Marten, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education, joins Robert Balfanz for a conversation about how local innovation, K-12 and higher education collaboration, NPSS, and federal education policy all have key roles to play in enabling design of an education system that works for all students.

In this episode, Robert Balfanz continues the conversation with New Hampshire’s Extended Learning Opportunity Network’s Kerrie Alley-Violette and Sean Peschel, two on-the-ground educators working to make “learning anywhere, anytime” real.  

 At the time when the sources and locations of knowledge and training have multiplied exponentially, innovative efforts like New Hampshire’s ELO Network help break seat time requirements, drawing on the realization that learning is not determined by the amount of time a student spends in a classroom, but rather occurs both in school and through experiences outside of schools. What Kerrie and Sean’s groundbreaking work shows is that challenging seat time is being done—and thus that it can be done. 

When teams of educators, students, and community members across the nation work to redesign high schools, one thing that repeatedly stands in the way is the school schedule and the need to meet seat time requirements. There is no better example of how the 20th Century designed high school no longer works in the 21st century than seat time. It is based in the idea that how much you learn is determined by how long you spend sitting in a classroom and originated at the turn of the 20th century as it means to standardize student learning experiences.

A hundred years later, the standards and accountability of credit students needed to graduate remains largely the same, and this essentially leaves no flexibility in a student's schedule for any form of experiential or out-of-school learning. At the time when the sources and location of knowledge and training have multiplied exponentially, it is the innovative efforts like New Hampshire's Extended Learning Opportunity Network that helps to break the gridlock of seat time requirements.

In this episode, Robert Balfanz is joined by Kerrie Alley-Violette, ELO coordinator of the Sanborn Regional High School and president of the ELO Network, and Sean Peschel, ELO coordinator at Oyster River High School and vice president of the ELO Network to discuss the innovative work happening in New Hampshire.

As a species, humans are smart, adaptive, and resilient.  We all have the capacity to think, create, and contribute to society at a high level.  What stands between this shared capacity and everyone realizing its full potential is the opportunity to learn.  This is where human shortcomings come in … including greed, power, fear, racism, and othering.  They play a role in the development of schools and education systems that are not only far from equal in the provision of opportunity to learn, but are too often designed in ways that undermine the agency, belonging, and connection we all need to thrive, especially for those furthest from opportunity.

In today’s episode Bob Balfanz is joined by Michael Wotorson, director of the Schott Foundation for Public Education’s National Opportunity to Learn Network, who has been at the forefront of efforts to organize and support community-driven efforts to push schools towards opportunity to learn for all. 

The evidence is clear. Students need to attend school on a regular basis to succeed.  If the purpose of school is to help students learn and development, then being there is important. 

Until quite recently, however, we did not regularly measure the extent to which the students enrolled in a school were attending on a regular basis.  Until 2017 or so, the most common measure used to measure a school’s attendance was average daily attendance (ADA), or how of the many students enrolled in the school are present on the typical day. It turns out that this measure hides as much as it reveals. This is because it’s very possible for a school to have an ADA in the low 90’s, but still have 20% of its students chronically absent -- missing ten percent (or about a month) or more of the school year.

Since the mid 2000’s, Hedy Chang and her organization, Attendance Works, has called attention to chronic absenteeism, its consequences and prevalence, and optimal solutions.

As we kick off season two of the Designing Education podcast during National Mentoring Month, Bob Balfanz is joined by Tim Wills, Chief Impact Officer for MENTOR, the leading organization in the nation working to scale high-quality mentoring in and out of school.

Positive relationships enable trust, which enables cooperation, and collective and engaged effort. They also serve as a buffer to the impacts of trauma and life's challenges. It is becoming more and more recognized that positive supportive relationships with adults are essential to school success. The pandemic drove home how important supportive relationships in schools between adults and students were to the wellbeing of all. Yet, middle and high schools have not been designed to support and enable strong adult-student relationships. Teachers often see 120 to 150 students a day, students interact with six to 10 or more adults every day for short periods of highly scripted time, which leaves little time or opportunity for students and teachers to get to know each other. As a result, everyone tends to interact with each other based on their role in the school. Thus, only about half of high school students report there is an adult at school who knows and cares about them as a person, with only about one third of students from historically underserved populations saying this. Those that said they had a supportive adult at school reported half the mental health challenges during the pandemic as those who did not. We can see that relationships really matter. They are not nice. They are necessary. So how do we close the relationship gap in schools? Tune in as we dig deep into this question. 

Traditionally, schools have been designed around a set of standard practices and expectations. When students do not fully benefit from these practices or conform to the expectations, schools either add on supports or establish consequences to try to modify behaviors and outcomes.

Over the past 15 years, researchers, school officials, and school teams have developed an approach that pools the knowledge of teachers, counselors, students, and families to identify solutions to support students more proactively, using predictive indicators of important outcomes like high school graduation or college degree attainment. This approach has been called different things, including early warning intervention systems, on-track systems, or multi-tiered student support systems. Pioneers of this work now seek to further develop it in ways that incorporate recent learnings from the brain sciences and adolescent development to create more comprehensive, inclusive student success systems.

In the 11th and final episode of season one, Carla Gay, Director of Innovation & Partnerships for the Gresham Barlow School District in Oregon, addresses some of the important elements needed to go deeper and provide better student support and school improvement initiatives.

The public high school is a uniquely American invention, and our public high schools have played a powerful role in the development of our nation. The challenge is that in today’s world, a high school diploma alone is not enough to usher young people immediately into a middle-class, life-supporting existence. Further, public high schools must take all who walk in the door, regardless of prior motivations, learning experiences, and life circumstances, and find a way to graduate all of them ready for some sort of post-secondary education or training--a mission they are not currently designed to meet. 

Over the past five years, a group of six states have been working with the Everyone Graduate Center at Johns Hopkins University on the Cross State High School Redesign Collaborative initiative. Many of these states are using the comprehensive school improvement provisions from the Federal Every Student Succeeds Act to organize the work. Dr. Sonja Robertson, Executive Director of School Improvement for the Mississippi Department of Education, has been part of this effort from the very beginning and joins Bob Balfanz to discuss the many things we’ve learned from this cross-collaborative effort. 

In this episode, Robert Balfanz is joined by Susanne Diggs-Wilborn, Vice President for College Success for Achieve Atlanta. Our nation's public education system has always sought to prepare and enable each generation to be ready to succeed in the world. To be on a pathway to adult success requires not only a high school diploma, but some postsecondary schooling or training beyond it. Yet, the supports we provide to students to make the transition from high school to college and be successful have not kept pace with the need. In part, this is because K-12 schooling and higher education were designed as two separate systems with very little connective tissue between them. This makes it easy to get lost or to be denied opportunity into this breach.

Achieve Atlanta is at the forefront of this work; in this episode, Dr. Diggs-Wilborn and Dr. Balfanz discuss ways to help make students into community members, by facilitating the shift from just being accepted to truly belonging.

In this episode, Ashley Seiler, Chief Partnership Officer at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, joins Robert Balfanz for a discussion about how BBBS created an ecosystem of over 100 community partners, three school districts, and 18 schools that serves over 10,000 students in a range of critical supports both in and out of school.  

We often say it takes a village to raise a child. We don't, however, organize our schools that way. The assumption is that everything the school needs is provided by teachers and staff, with little coordination or communication with out-of-school activities that students and families engage with after-school or on weekends. In many ways this puts too big a burden on schools and leaves too many community assets underutilized. 

The result is students don't get the full set of supports and experiences they need, school staff are exhausted doing the best they can without all the resources they need, and community organizations are often frustrated that they could be doing more, but don't have a clear way to do so. 

In eastern Missouri, a dedicated nonprofit partner with a listening ear helps coordinate a community-school ecosystem, offering large numbers of young people an integrated support framework rather than relying on ineffectual shift work. 

In this episode, Dr. Richard Lofton, assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and leader of the Nobody Asked Me Campaign, joins Dr. Balfanz to discuss the Campaign and how it sheds light on the experiences of students and families in Baltimore City. 

When we think about designing education to meet the needs of the 21st century and provide everyone a robust pathway to adult success, we typically draw on two sources: the adults involved in the current education system and our own experiences. Education is the one field where just about everybody considers themselves experts, because we all have a deep lived experience of going to school. However, relying on these can result in an education system that is much less dynamic than the world around it, and one that doesn’t even ask the students and families that are experiencing it firsthand. Yet they are the most informed observers of where new designs are needed, what they might be, and the challenges we need to address. This is particularly true for the communities and students for whom the current education system works the least: communities and students who live in areas where residential segregation, structural racism, and disinvestment have produced concentrated poverty in underfunded school systems.

It is at the intersection of place, history, and student voice that Dr. Lofton is doing an inventive work to ask those whom nobody has asked and connect their knowledge and insights with a growing coalition of community groups and policy makers to redesign the most broken aspects of our education system.