Traditionally, schools have been designed around a set of standard practices and expectations. When students do not fully benefit from these practices or conform to the expectations, schools either add on supports or establish consequences to try to modify behaviors and outcomes.

Over the past 15 years, researchers, school officials, and school teams have developed an approach that pools the knowledge of teachers, counselors, students, and families to identify solutions to support students more proactively, using predictive indicators of important outcomes like high school graduation or college degree attainment. This approach has been called different things, including early warning intervention systems, on-track systems, or multi-tiered student support systems. Pioneers of this work now seek to further develop it in ways that incorporate recent learnings from the brain sciences and adolescent development to create more comprehensive, inclusive student success systems.

In the 11th and final episode of season one, Carla Gay, Director of Innovation & Partnerships for the Gresham Barlow School District in Oregon, addresses some of the important elements needed to go deeper and provide better student support and school improvement initiatives.