Diplomas Now uses a data-driven, whole-school approach. Focused on grades six through 12, the program was designed to support students in high-poverty and high-need middle and high schools. Based on research proving the importance of early identification and intervention, the Diplomas Now model supports students who are at high-risk of dropping out of high school. Today, the Diplomas Now model is used in schools across the country.
Turning Education R&D Investments into Impact
Backed by decades of research, Diplomas Now evolved with the support of strategic federal investments in education R&D:
$ 30 million
$30 million from an Investing in Innovation (i3) grant
$ 5 million
$5 million from an i3 extension grant
The impact of these investments is clear:
Positive and statistically significant impact on increasing the number of 6th and 9th graders who did not display early warning indicators for dropping out of high school
Fewer chronically absent 6th graders
Increased student participation in academically focused after-school activities
How data-driven, tiered interventions can keep students on track to graduate
High rates of chronic absenteeism have persisted since the pandemic, nearing 30 percent in many states. Interventions inspired by the federally supported Diplomas Now model offer a solution. With federal funding from the Investing in Innovations (i3) program (now called the Education and Innovation Research, or EIR, program), Diplomas Now developed a whole-school improvement model and student support framework proven to help students stay in school and remain on track to graduate.
Launched in 2008 through a partnership between the Everyone Graduates Center and its Talent Development Secondary program at Johns Hopkins University, City Year, and Communities In Schools, Diplomas Now uses a data-driven, whole-school approach. Focused on grades six through 12, the program was designed to support students in high-poverty and high-need middle and high schools.
“What we were trying to demonstrate was that in these highest need, low graduation rate high schools and the middle schools that feed them, fundamentally they had more students with needs than adults available to help them.”
How it Works
The Diplomas Now model is made up of a creative set of supports, including an early warning system and additional people power to help keep students on track to graduate. The goal is to get the right supports, to the right students, at the right time. This is done at three interrelated levels.
First, Diplomas Now works to make the school a good place for students to be. Based on a needs assessment, this often involves working with school staff to create enhanced learning environments and ensure effective teaching and learning. Second, students with early warning indicators for attendance, behavior, or course performance are provided social-emotional learning and academic support from AmeriCorps members working as success coaches. Third, students who face challenges to academic success outside of school are offered in-school counseling and other support services from community partners, organized by an integrated student support site coordinator.
The team leader for the AmeriCorps success coaches, the integrated student support site coordinator, and instructional coaches, all join grade-level teacher teams in participating in regular student success team meetings, where attendance, behavior, and course performance data is regularly analyzed to identify additional students with early warning indicators in need of support, to select or develop effective responses or interventions, and then progress monitor students who are being supported, to make sure the assigned action is working, and if it is not, trying an alternative approach, until something works.
Proven Results
An MDRC evaluation, “Addressing Early Warning Indicators,” revealed that Diplomas Now model had a positive and statistically significant impact on increasing the number of sixth and ninth graders who did not display early warning indicators for dropping out of high school—meaning they had at least 85 percent attendance rates, had not been suspended or expelled for more than three days, and had passing grades in English and math. Fewer 6th graders were chronically absent. Students at Diplomas Now schools also reported participating in more academically focused after-school activities, and more reported having a positive relationship with an adult at school who was not a teacher than did their peers in the comparison schools.
The use of early warning and tiered intervention systems, which are at the heart of the Diplomas Now Model, has earned attention for its significant impact on graduation rates and is credited for playing a key role in the large increase in graduation rates in Alabama and West Virginia over the last decade. Between 2010 and 2019, Alabama raised its four-year graduation rate from 40th in the nation to first. West Virginia, meanwhile, jumped from 27th to third.
Several coalitions are working to scale the key concepts from the Diplomas Now model to address some of the biggest problems in education, including chronic absenteeism and low graduation rates. The National Partnership for Student Success was created by the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center, Americorps, and the Department of Education in July 2022. It seeks to meet the President’s challenge of bringing 250,000 additional adults into schools to serve as mentors, tutors, success coaches, and integrated student support coordinator to address the academic, social-emotional, and well-being impacts of the pandemic on the nation’s schoolchildren. The coalition now has more than 200 member organizations.
The GRAD Partnership is working to scale the next generation of early warning systems, designed for post-pandemic times, called student success systems. It includes organizations like BARR, the American Institutes for Research, the Network for College Success, the Carnegie Endowment for Teaching and Learning, and the Everyone Graduates Center.
The Cross-State, High School Redesign Collaborative, which includes networks of redesigning high schools in Mississippi, Ohio, New York, and Alabama, is integrating early warning systems and people-powered student supports, into whole school improvement efforts to create localized versions of the Diplomas Now model. All of these current efforts are working to bring the key components of the Diplomas Now model to scale.
The federal investment in scaling and evaluating Diplomas Now highlighted effective solutions to persistent problems in public schools. It has shown that approaches such as early warning systems, tiered interventions, community partnerships, and integrated student supports can make a difference when used together. The federal investment to develop and validate the Diplomas Now framework continues to have meaningful ripple effects on school improvement efforts today.