EWIS and College Success Outcomes

Are Massachusetts high school graduates ready for postsecondary education?

Massachusetts ESE seeks to prepare all Massachusetts students for success after high school. We aim to do more than simply graduate students, but ensure they are truly ready for the range of postsecondary educational opportunities that await them after high school. For more, see the ESE Strategic Plan Summary.

For students who graduated from Massachusetts public high schools in 2013: [1]

·  69% enroll in postsecondary education the immediate fall after graduation;

·  60% of graduates persist to the second year with one in five immediate college goers not enrolling the following fall;

·  more than one-third of graduates enrolled in a Massachusetts public postsecondary institutions take at least one remedial course in their first semester; and

·  gaps in college enrollment, academic readiness and college persistence exist among racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities, and English learners.

An Early Warning: Students at Risk of Missing Academic Milestones

Massachusetts EWIS, or Early Warning Indicator System, is a tool to systematically identify students that may need additional attention in order to reach an upcoming academic milestone. The Massachusetts EWIS identifies students in grades 1 through 12 as high, medium and low risk of missing important academic milestones throughout the academic trajectory. To support schools and districts in understanding whether high school students are on track to succeed in postsecondary, ESE has expanded the scope of EWIS to include 3 new college success milestones.

Grade Grouping / Academic Milestone
Expected student outcome
Grades 1–3 / Reading by the End of Third Grade
Proficiency on 3rd grade ELA state assessment
Grades 4–6 / Middle School Ready
Proficiency on 6th grade ELA and math state assessments
Grades 7–9 / High School Ready
Passing grades on all 9th grade courses
Grades 10–12 / High School Graduation
Meeting all local and state graduation requirements
College Enrollment
Enrolling in postsecondary education /
Academic Readiness
Enrolling in credit-bearing courses without needing developmental education /
College Persistence
Persisting in the second year of postsecondary education /

The EWIS is developed by looking at the actual outcomes for Massachusetts students in prior years; statistically validating a wide range of student level data; and predicting whether current students are on track to meet upcoming academic milestones. EWIS only uses existing data sets available at the state level. Each milestone was identified as being educationally meaningful to the field. They also relate to each other; a student proficient on the 3rd grade ELA state assessment is 3.7 times more likely to graduate from high school than a student scoring below proficient and a student who passes all grade 9 courses is 14 times more likely to graduate from high school within 4 years than a 9th grade student who fails one or more courses.

EWIS data and tools for the first four academic milestones (Reading by the End of 3rd grade, Middle School Ready, High School Ready, High School Graduation) were initially released in 2012. Using EWIS tools and other resources, educators across Massachusetts study their students’ risk, explore underlying causes, deploy programming and monitor results of interventions. Districts and schools across Massachusetts have made great strides in reducing dropout rates and increasing high school graduation rates recently with our dropout rate dropping to 1.9% for school year 2014-15 and our 4 year graduation rate reaching 87% for the 2015 cohort. EWIS is one tool ESE provides to districts and schools to support this work.

Not a “Life Sentence” or College Admissions measure

The intent of expanding EWIS to include college success outcomes is to help schools and districts determine which additional supports are necessary to meet the college readiness needs of students, and to better target the interventions and programmatic supports at the individual, small group, and whole school levels. It is not an accountability measure or a college admission indicator and should not be used to place students in a particular academic track. Student success should be measured by students meeting the educational outcomes, not changes in a student risk levels.

The Massachusetts EWIS is… / The Massachusetts EWIS is not…
a tool to better target interventions and college readiness supports at the individual, small group, and whole school levels / a label for students (“not college-track”)
a systematic way to identify students for further review to determine if additional supports are necessary / a diagnostic tool with the exact reasons why a student is at risk
related to measures that are included in the state’s accountability system (PPI) / an accountability or college admissions measure
a system that ESE reexamines each year to continually improve / a stagnant system that will remain same in future years

EWIS data and tools – in conjunction with local context and appropriate interventions – can help district and school leaders, along with college access partners, increase the percentage of students succeeding in postsecondary education. This is consistent with the Department of Higher Education’s Vision Project, which serves to increase the percentage of high school graduates going to college – and their readiness for college level work. EWIS is most powerful when part of ongoing data work or a data-driven cycle of inquiry.

Timeline

Beginning in September 2016, student-level reports for the college success outcomes (EW602) will be available in Edwin Analytics and support resources for using this new data will be available on the EWIS website. Current EWIS reports (EW301, EW302, EW317, EW318 and EW601) will be available for all students in grades 1-12 students for the four K-12 EWIS outcomes. In September 2017, state, district, and school-level aggregation reports for the college success outcomes will be available in Edwin Analytics.

[1] Source: Edwin CR301 and CR302 reports for 2013 graduates, enrolling immediate fall. Additional information on postsecondary outcomes of Massachusetts public high school students can be found in the Success After High School DART.