Graduation Coaching in a Rural District School

Abstract

The GEAR UP graduation coach intervention developed by the GEAR UP Learning Centers at Western Michigan University (WMU) addresses the issue of academic failure of at-risk students in high school. This personalized early intervention strategy begins by assessing students’ unique circumstances, academic histories, and strengths and weaknesses in 9th grade. Coach and student work together, networking with parents and teachers, to establish a plan that will bolster academic achievement. Intensive graduation coaching identifies internal and external resources to ensure the student’s success and closely monitors the student's progress. This intervention has been implemented successfully in two urban school settings and results indicated substantial benefits. This study examines a replication of this model in a rural school setting for one year with an incoming 9th grade class. The process involved several phases: program preparation and staff and student selection; implementing the coaching intervention and monitoring progress for informed, data-driven decision-making; and final summative evaluation. Two general questions were of particular research interest. Could students be identified proactively who are likely to benefit from this program? Did students selected as part of the coaching caseload improve their grades? A longitudinal, retrospective baseline study provided matched comparison groups for examining the effects of the intervention treatment. Results show that these graduation coached at-risk students as a group performed academically in core courses almost an entire letter grade better than would have anticipated based on comparative student results from baseline studies. Well over 50% of the treatment students, all of whom were predicted to fail, actually succeeded well enough to be prepared to progress to the next grade level. In this instance, graduation coaching appears to have significant potential in rural as well as urban school to promote student retention, success, and perseverance to graduation.