Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from The Hechinger Report, author Tara Garcia Mathewson looks into a new software being used to identify and keep track of at-risk students in K-12 schools.

• What first steps could education advocates take to implement this system elsewhere? How could a similar software be used to observe patterns across districts, or even nationwide?

• To learn about three lessons gathered from data on how students actually use educational apps, click here.

Adults in a school generally know the names of the most at-risk students. Those having the hardest time academically or emotionally stand out.

In Richland School District 2 in suburban Columbia, South Carolina, Erin Armstrong says if students are ranked according to risk, the top 10 to 15 names will be familiar. Those students are the ones who appear in the office all the time. They’re getting in trouble. “The numbers 15 to 30,” Armstrong said, “those are the ones who are falling through the cracks.”

Armstrong ... has taken a leading role in developing a new system for making sure all students get the attention they need. Five years ago, if teachers or administrators wanted to identify the struggling students they might be missing, they would have had to spend hours combing through spreadsheets, piecing together risk profiles. Now, a software program does that automatically, tracking dozens of factors related to student performance, attendance and behavior, and updating risk levels for every student monthly. Importantly, all the adults in the building have access to this information and they can add their own notes about students so that new insights are shared. Every time someone intervenes with a student and tries something to get or keep that child on track, it’s logged.

Read the full article about at-risk students by Tara Garcia Mathewson at The Hechinger Report0