Post Kind: Article

This collection is called “stories of improvement with tangible results” and we’ve split these stories up by category—chronic absenteeism, on-track rates, and college access—to make it easy for you to find the story you need!

In 1971 I started working at The Group School (TGS), an alternative high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My connection to TGS started shortly after I ran afoul of the administration at the high school where I had been teaching, for sponsoring an event that included speakers from women’s liberation and gay liberation, and for publicly calling for a school walk-out to protest the escalating war in Vietnam.

This collection of curated student work spans the hallways of High Tech High schools. See examples and take the techniques so you can use the ones that will work on your school.

Our regional attendance network designed a sequenced communication cadence that rolls out in three waves: a “Start Strong” attendance campaign in the fall, followed by winter and spring campaigns. Early evidence suggests that such campaigns positively impact attendance not only during the campaign but continue to produce positive impacts for a short time afterwards.

Improvement isn’t just a method. It’s culture.

In April, I had the great pleasure of moderating a “crossover” panel that spanned the Deeper Learning Conference and the National Summit on Improvement in Education. 

Deeper learning and continuous improvement are answers to different halves of the same question. The future of schooling, and the future of our communities, depends on our willingness to reintegrate things we have allowed to drift apart

How a New York City network used weekly 1:1 attendance check-ins to cut chronic absenteeism — and why pizza parties miss the students who need help most.

Many schools and districts have responded to this challenge by ramping up attendance incentives such as prizes, parties, or special privileges intended to draw students to school. These approaches often withhold a positive experience until an absent student behaves differently, reflecting a common belief that the right reward will motivate students to attend more consistently. Unfortunately, research points to a mismatch between this solution and the nature of the problem.

One of the most powerful—and challenging—changes was to make practice visible. Sharing unfinished work required trust, and that trust was not built overnight.