Spotlights Share Their Stories: Johnson Central High School

The GRAD Partnership recently checked in with Noel Crum to learn about what led to his school’s decision to work with BARR, and what impact that the work has had on its students.
The GRAD Partnership recently checked in with Noel Crum to learn about what led to his school’s decision to work with BARR, and what impact that the work has had on its students.
A recent analysis of data from a dozen states revealed that one in ten school suspensions between 2017-18 to 2021-22 were related to student attendance (for example, missing class). Whether students are truant, absent, or late, suspending students causes them to miss even more class time. With schools across the country facing record high rates of chronic absenteeism, this amounts to attempting to put out a fire with a torch.
Recently, the Rural Schools Collaborative Team, along with GRAD Partnership Intermediary North State Together (NST) had the opportunity to meet members of the leadership team working to improve student success and connectedness at Tulelake Basin High School in Tulelake, CA. Their efforts were led by Tara Wright-Baley, the school counselor and a former graduate of Tulelake herself.
This spring, the Rural Schools Collaborative Team, along with GRAD Partnership Intermediary North State Together (NST), had the opportunity to meet members of the TRIO leadership team working to build student success and connectedness at Anderson Union School District.
This week, as schools across the nation celebrate teachers, we reflect on our most recent gathering of leaders from more than 20 districts that took place in Denver, Colorado. The energizing event put a spotlight on the tireless efforts of our educators and highlighted the transformative strides schools are making in building student support systems nationwide.
Demopolis High School was chosen as the GRAD Partnership’s fifth spotlight school for its success in fostering student-centered mindsets as part of their implementation of a student success system.
Student success systems are a way of organizing a school community to better support the academic progress, college and career transitions, and academic well-being of all students. Holistic, real-time, actionable data is one of the four core components of such systems, yet school leaders and teachers can find data access difficult, data manipulation for visualization cumbersome, and facilitating data-based conversations daunting.
The GRAD Partnership is proud to announce Indiana’s Center for Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) as its newest Intermediary. CELL, which was founded in 2001, is affiliated with the University of Indianapolis, and it joins a growing coalition of organizational partners engaged in advancing student success systems throughout the nation.
In an effort to shed more light on why students with disabilities graduate at lower rates, NCLD and WestEd are conducting a national study 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.
Manzano High School's Family Resource Night is an inspiring example of how schools can create meaningful connections with families and communities to address chronic absenteeism.