Diplomas Now helps schools and communities enable
their most vulnerable students succeed in school
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The Diplomas Now Approach
Diplomas Now combines improvements for entire schools
with enhanced student support guided by early-warning
system. It brings together three nonprofits to partner with
highest-need schools and districts to get the right support to
the right students at the right time:
Johns Hopkins
University’s Talent
Development
Secondary provides
curriculum/instruction
support and early
warning system.
City Year’s “near
peer” AmeriCorps
members provide
individualized and
whole-class
academic and socialemotional support.
Communities In
Schools provides
case-managed support
to students with the
highest needs.
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Diplomas Now Addresses Early
Warning Indicators
Future Dropouts
Can Be Identified
as Early as 6th Grade
Research shows sixth-graders with one of these early
warning signs have 25 percent or lower graduation rates:1
Poor attendance, behavior and course performance (English
and math).
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Diplomas Now identifies those students early, provides
targeted support and helps them get on track.
1 Robert Balfanz, "Putting Middle Grades Students on the Graduation Path," Keynote Address, National Middle
School Association, 2009, slide 7
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Investing in Innovation (i3)
In 2010, Diplomas Now won federal
Investing in Innovation (i3) grant to
implement model across 11 school
districts and validate its impact on students
through a randomized control trial.
Rigorous study involved:
o 62 low-performing secondary schools & 40,000 lowincome students
o 32 schools randomly assigned to Diplomas Now.
o 30 schools did not have Diplomas Now but other
reforms.
PepsiCo Foundation provided
matching grant.
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NEW, EARLY IMPACT
FINDINGS
TO BE RELEASED JUNE 21,
2016
Results embargoed until then
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Diplomas Now
Reduces Early-Warning Indicators
Diplomas Now schools had positive, statistically significant
increase in percentage of sixth- and ninth-graders with no
early-warning indicators (poor attendance, poor behavior and
failing math and English).
•
This is key metric Diplomas Now was designed to improve.
Why this matters:

Eliminating such indicators can triple students’ odds of graduating from
high school from 25% to 75% 1

Gaining positive, statistically significant results after only first year of
multi-year intervention under challenging conditions is encouraging.

Statistical significant, positive impacts in randomized control trials are rare.
(Only 1 in 10 such education studies produces positive, meaningful results2)
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1 Robert Balfanz, "Putting Middle Grades Students on the Graduation Path," Keynote Address, National Middle School Association, 2009, slide 14,
2 Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, “Randomized Controlled Trials Commissioned by the Institute of Education Sciences Since 2002: How Many Found
Positive Versus Weak or No Effects,” July 2013.
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Particularly Strong and Important Impact
in the Middle Grades
Diplomas Now middle schools achieved positive, statistically
significant impact on reducing:
•
Percentage of students with early-warning indicators.
•
Chronic absenteeism.
Why this matters:
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Robust results achieved even when sample size was cut in half
to include only middle schools.
First rigorous evidence that chronic absenteeism can be reduced
in high-poverty middle schools by using early-warning system
and student support.
Helps validates using Diplomas Now strategies in major efforts,
such as White House’s My Brother’s Keeper Student Success
Mentor Initiative.
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Summary: Key Takeaway
The study’s early results provide initial evidence to
support the Diplomas Now theory of action:
Combining improvements for entire schools with
enhanced student support guided by an early-warning
system strengthens the nation’s most challenged schools
and keeps more of the most vulnerable students on-track
to high school graduation.
To learn more, visit www.diplomasnow.org
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How Will Diplomas Now Use New Findings?
New federal education law – Every Student Succeeds
Act – emphasizes evidence-based initiatives and
includes new tiers of evidence for a program to be
used in low-performing schools and qualify for federal
Title I school improvement funding.
 “Strong evidence” – the most rigorous tier – means a
program has had at least one randomized study that
shows a statistically significant effect on student
outcomes.
 As states and districts craft new improvement plans,
Diplomas Now will leverage its strong evidence – to
work with more high-needs schools and students.
 Apply for scale-up grant in final round of Investing in
Innovation (i3) program.

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