Spokane Public Schools (SPS), the second-largest district in the State of Washington, is committed to making sure that all doors are open to their students after they graduate from high school. To achieve this, SPS has implemented a districtwide campaign called T-2-4 focused on preparing students to successfully complete some form of higher education: technical, 2-year, or 4-year. To monitor progress and measure results, the district has developed an online dashboard organized around the Four Keys to College and Career Readiness (Think, Know, Act, Go) and a fifth area identifying the foundational social supports needed to prepare students for success after high school.
Under the leadership of Chief Academic Officer Steven Gering, the SPS staff developed a web-based dashboard that provides frequently updated, integrated, and visualized student data. The system allows all K–12 administrators and teachers in the district to quickly identify early warning signs and intervene as needed with students who need support. In fall of 2014, SPS administered CampusReady, a self-diagnostic tool that measures college and career readiness through the lens of the Four Keys, to almost all of its middle schools and high schools. The data from CampusReady has been integrated into their existing dashboard and the Four Keys have been explicitly used to organize the overall system and to provide a framework for how the district as a whole talks about preparing students for success after high school.
Next Steps
As the dashboard is rolled out to principals throughout the district, they will directly connect their goals and strategic plans to a consistent shared framework. The explicit intentional connections between this framework and the schools’ strategic plans will help Spokane Public Schools create an environment that fosters college and career readiness for all students. Throughout 2015, Epic School Partnerships will continue to work with Spokane Public Schools to identify components of the Four Keys that can be effectively used in their early warning system process, and to identify other ways the Four Keys can be used to ensure that students graduate and are prepared to successfully transition beyond high school.