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Amplifying Youth Voice: Strategies for Helping Youth have their Voices Heard

Student voice—the process of educators, school leaders, and other supportive adults gathering young people’s values and unique perspectives and implementing policy and practice changes based on these shared ideas—provides an opportunity for young people to be active participants in improving their schools. In this resource we explain how student voice increases student engagement, enhances education systems, and improves student outcomes. We also share three strategies to support schools and community organizations with gathering student voice data.

Colorado Dropout Prevention Framework

This robust resource for district and school teams is grounded in the four core components of student success systems, and outlines five foundational practices and four strategies to reduce dropout rates and increase student engagement in learning, graduation rates, credit attainment, and preparation for postsecondary options.

How to Improve Your School’s Response to Chronic Absenteeism

This action planning tool from the GRAD Partnership includes guiding questions for school-based teams to use for understanding chronic absenteeism in their local context and strategizing for designing interventions to meet their specific needs. It also includes a Discovery Protocol to guide an optional team activity to foster insights and empathy. Use a printable version or an electronic fillable version. Tips for using this resource: Watch the webinar below to learn more about the tool

Attendance Plan Reflection Tools for State & Local Education Agencies (Student Engagement and Attendance Center)

The Student Engagement and Attendance Center developed these tools to guide SEA and LEA staff in a review of existing attendance plans and approaches to identify opportunities to strengthen those plans across instructional settings. This tool comprises considerations and reflection questions to help identify areas in which attendance guidance and supports can be strengthened. Additional student engagement and attendance tools created by Student Engagement and Attendance Technical Assistance Center (SEAC) can be found on the U.S. Department of Education website.

Equity Discussion Guide (Student Engagement and Attendance Center)

This guide is designed by Westat Insight (formerly Insight Policy Research) and American Institutes for Research to help state education agencies (SEAs), local education agencies (LEAs) identify and reflect on changes to attendance policies and practices to better align them with equity considerations. The guide invites teams to explicitly focus on one or more groups of students as part of increasing equity in attendance-related work. In addition to consideration of family income or socioeconomic status of student groups, the guide encourages consideration of other student groups that chronic absenteeism may disproportionately affect, such as students grouped by racial/ethnic identity,…

Planning Tool for Youth Engagement (Student Engagement and Attendance Center)

This tool is designed by Westat Insight (formerly Insight Policy Research) and American Institutes for Research to help state education agencies (SEAs), local education agencies (LEAs), and other educators work as a team to leverage relationships with young people and establish meaningful engagement. By using a continuous improvement process, teams at local, district, and state levels will collaboratively assess current youth engagement practices, identify gaps, determine improvement practices that align with the components of authentic engagement, and prioritize practices to implement. Teams will then create an actionable plan to monitor and adjust practices for continuous improvement with the goal…

Planning Tool for Family Engagement (Student Engagement and Attendance Center)

This tool is designed by Westat Insight (formerly Insight Policy Research) and American Institutes for Research to help state education agencies (SEAs), local education agencies (LEAs), and other educators work as a team to move toward practices with high authenticity for family engagement—practices that leverage relationships with families and seek to engage meaningfully with them. By using a continuous improvement process, teams at local, district, and state levels will collaboratively assess current family engagement practices, identify gaps, determine improvement practices that align with the components of authentic engagement, and prioritize practices to implement. Teams will then create an actionable…

School Connectedness Helps Students Thrive (CDC.gov)

The CDC shares why connectedness is important and the benefits of promoting connectedness in our schools. The website includes specific actions schools can take to build connectedness, the effects of school connectedness, and additional resources to decrease risky behaviors through connectedness, including from the CDC’s What Works in Schools. See also the March 2009 CDC report, School connectedness: Strategies for increasing protective factors among youth, which includes detailed examples of six strategies to promote school connectedness:

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