Early Warning System For College Readiness

From PEN Newsblast
An article in the latest issue of Voices in Urban Education profiles the College Readiness Indicator System (CRIS) initiative, which is developing a menu of signals and supports on students’ academic progress, tenacity, and college knowledge at the individual, school, and district levels. Working with certain districts to address the college-readiness gap, the John W. Gardner Center employs the CRIS framework, which enhances early warning systems in three ways. Its indicators look beyond academic preparedness to include student knowledge and attitudes for successfully accessing college and overcoming obstacles to college graduation. Its approach generates and uses data that reflect activities, processes, and outcomes at the individual, setting (classroom or school), and district levels. And its iterative “design-build” approach incorporates feedback from key stakeholders, and affords attention to local variation in capacity, needs, and opportunities. The CRIS project also employs a Cycle of Inquiry (COI) to help districts think through necessary conditions for effective use of indicators: When are the data available? Who ensures data are entered accurately? At what threshold is intervention warranted? What actions are taken? The COI requires districts to reflect on the meaning of their selected indicators and make explicit rules and cut scores that connect those indicators to action. The article also offers lessons and key factors that influence the speed and depth at which districts can build their CRIS.
Read more: http://www.annenberginstitute.org/VUE/vue35-gurantz