Early Warning Indicator and Intervention Systems (EWS) are an evolving strategic response to one of our nation’s most pressing challenges: enabling all students to stay on track to graduate from high school ready for college and career. In an era of data-driven education reform, EWS are at the cutting edge. Their rapid development is a harbinger of how schools, students, educators, and communities can be empowered to use data to help children achieve their dreams for generations to come.

EWS use “real time” or “near real time” data to identify students who are off track, so that educators can appropriately support them in advancing from grade to grade, and eventually in graduating from high school with their class. These systems grew out of a simple premise that disengagement from school is a gradual process and that students send identifiable signals that they are on the path to dropping out. As a result, data could be used to identify trends among students, enabling educators to intervene with those who are likely to leave the education system unless they are effectively supported.2 From an initial focus on dropout prevention, EWS are rapidly evolving toward even broader usage, with emergent efforts underway to examine and ultimately integrate both school readiness indicators at the start of student’s schooling, and college and career readiness indicators during K-12 schooling.

Download the full report, which also details lessons from the field and paths forward, available here in pdf.