Empowering and Learning from Rural Schools: Innovative Solutions for Student Success

In this episode, we welcome Taylor McCabe-Juhnke, Executive Director of the Rural Schools Collaborative, to discuss the work they are doing to bring student success systems to rural schools across the nation. 

With one in four of our nation's students attending rural schools, it's crucial that these often-overlooked communities are included in national improvement efforts.  Taylor will share how the Collaborative is helping empower these schools by connecting them through local intermediary organizations, fostering dynamic learning communities that not only strengthen student success in rural areas but also generate innovative solutions with the potential to reshape education across the country. 

Transcript

Robert Balfanz (00:05.778)

Hello, and welcome to season three of the Designing Education Podcast. Today we'll be talking to Taylor McCabe-Juhnke, Executive Director of the Rural Schools Collaborative, about how student success systems can play a critical role in our nation's rural schools. We can't wait to start the conversation. But before we do, we want to take a moment to remind you to subscribe to the Designing Education Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Designing Education Podcast and never miss an episode.

Robert Balfanz (00:44.231)

Welcome to the Designing Education podcast series. I'm Dr. Robert Balfanz, Director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. In this episode, Taylor McCabe- Junke, Executive Director of the Rural Schools Collaborative, is going to talk with us about what it will take for rural schools to provide all their students with the supports and experiences they need to thrive in school. It is the fifth episode of our third season of conversations we're having with education leaders, thinkers, and practitioners from across the country.

With them, we are talking about what it will take to create an education system that truly empowers all young people and sets them on a pathway to adult success. This season, we are doing a deep dive on student success systems or how schools can better organize and deliver the support students need in pandemic impacted times. Today, we are going to explore how student success systems work in a rural context. So, let's get to it. Welcome, Taylor.

We start all our podcasts by asking our guests the same question. When you were in high school, what was a good day?

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (01:52.098)

Thanks for having me, Bob. It's exciting to be here. In high school, a good day for me would be a day that I got to go to debate class. I only took debate as a senior and found that I really loved it and met a lot of friends there. And if the cafeteria also serving crispitos, which were little fried yummy things, that would be an excellent day in high school.

Robert Balfanz (02:19.41)

So, at the heart of it, it was those sorts of shared experiences, right? That rich activity with your peers and debate, and then the joy of you all having a tasty snack in the cafeteria. 

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (02:30.401)

Absolutely.

Robert Balfanz 

All right, so let's dig into it more now. And let's just start our conversation by hearing a little bit about the Rural Schools Collaborative.

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (02:41.646)

Yeah, the Rural Schools Collaborative is a national nonprofit, supporting rural education, and we have a mission of creating sustainable rural communities through a keen focus on place, on teachers, and on philanthropy. So, the way that we enact our work is through partnerships and that's why we're called collaborative. So, we actually serve 30 plus states across the US, and we do that by working with local trusted organizations like rural serving higher education, rural serving nonprofits, rural community foundations, and advocacy groups. And so, the idea is that we can do more by working together on a national scope than working individually. And also, that those folks can have peers across the country that are around to help support them and connect them and strengthen the work. So, we are sort of a network of networks, making sure that rural has a voice at the national stage and that great ideas can be shared.

Robert Balfanz (03:43.464)

I mean, that's wonderful, right? We really know that in all times, but especially in these challenging times, that we really need to be collaborative in our efforts. And that's even central to the idea of the Grad Partnership, which we're also both of, that we can do more together than apart. And also, that we need to ground it really in the local context and experiences. So, speaking of which, can you just share a little bit for our listeners about the challenges rural schools are facing in our pandemic impacted times? How did the pandemic and its aftermath disrupt or also enhance schooling in rural areas?  Some of each of that was there[AL1] .

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (04:25.154) 

Yeah, absolutely. I always like to say when I speak on sort of national stages such as these that each rural community is unique and that's the same, I'm sure in urban communities as well. And so, while I can't speak for all rural schools, I do think that there were some really interesting trends that we saw in sort of the pandemic-impacted schooling. And so to your point, Bob, it was really interesting that the pandemic actually was helpful in some ways to showcase the technology, gaps, and challenges that rural schools had and actually really addressed them where some schools, were better able to go remote or do remote distance learning and other schools really struggled if their students didn't have access to broadband at home or didn't have devices to take home, that in a rural context they may not have been able to easily make that switch with the pandemic. And so we did see a lot of support and funding, to really focus on rural broadband and focus on rural devices, which has been, interesting and helpful actually for a lot of rural schools, but there were certainly challenges as well for rural communities in those times that are still existing today and were exacerbated by the pandemic. Rural Schools Collaborative actually did a survey with the National Rural Education Association as well as TNTP to sort of see how the pandemic was impacting the teacher shortage. And we did find that in rural communities, it was also being exacerbated by early retirements of a lot of teachers who had been in these communities for a long time, really well respected, you know, but this was sort of something that they were ready to sort of retire early and low the pandemic. And so, the rural teacher shortage has been an ongoing challenge but was definitely underscored and exacerbated in rural communities and a lot of places haven't quite caught up, from those retirements.

Robert Balfanz (06:21.32)

Yeah, no, that's really important to recognize, right? That it was already tough to get a supply of rural teachers. Then when the pandemic commenced, and you're right, in rural and other areas that like, I've done my 20, 30 years, it's too strange now, it's enough, right?

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (06:39.17)

Yeah.

Robert Balfanz (06:50.738)

So that really brings us to student success systems. And to remind our audience, student success systems involve a team of adults in a school, first working to build strong relationships all around between students and students, students and teachers, the community and the school. And then progress monitoring all students on key indicators, their attendance, their course performance, to get ahead of it, to see when students are just beginning to show signs of struggle, to be proactive, not reactive. And then pooling their insights along with those of the other adults in the school, the students themselves, their families, to figure out both what's driving the challenge and what's the best way to respond to it and what additional supports might be effective. Where this really connects to that teacher shortage you were talking about that impacted rural schools and other schools is that we know one of the huge challenges our schools are facing post pandemic is both a big increase in student need, big increases of chronic absenteeism, mental health challenges.

Even just some students saying, what's the point of schooling? Or, maybe I can get by going four out of five days. At the same time, right, that we had staffing shortages. So, more student need, fewer adults is not a good recipe for student success. So, student success systems are trying really to create a system and a process and a means to make those student supports and those adults be able to make their efforts and actions go further and be more effective and reach more kids even as the need increases and their numbers shrink.  Can you tell us a little bit about how student success systems have been helping rural schools better provide students the support they need?

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (08:24.268)

To your point, Bob, I think that's also a really important thing to lift up about the pandemic in rural schools and their needs, just in terms of, you know, additional wraparound supports were sometimes challenging for schools to have, such as counselors, et cetera. And so, with the student need and even the teacher and staffing need for some of those services being higher, when we are already having challenges bringing in teachers, and counselors, you can really see how that sort of exacerbated in the pandemic and still exists today. So, but there's good news, right? And that's what's exciting about student success systems and how they're able to be utilized in in rural spaces. So, I think that it also creates sort of this interesting challenge of if you have limited staff, you have limited budget, you have limited time. How do you know where to spend your minutes and hours that will make the most impact for student outcomes? And I think that that's what's really interesting about this idea of student success systems as sort of a holistic way of really figuring out how to spend our time in a manner that will meet the most needs for the most students. And so, I think that that's a really great way for schools to think about why it's important to invest in student success systems is making sure that with your limited time that you're making the most impact. 

I will also share that anecdotally; a lot of folks really pride themselves in rural schools for having excellent relationships and knowing their students really well. And so, the Student Success Systems Framework also helps them really build on what they might perceive as their existing assets. You know, it's part of our school culture that we really look out for our students, that we know one another, that we support one another. And so, if you can build from that framework of positive relationships and meld it with the data that helps you know where and how to spend your time, you've got a really great recipe for success to do more um, with the same existing resources.

Robert Balfanz (10:18.768)

Yeah. And that's, that's a great point that really key to here is like, you know, all schools in different ways have some strengths in their students' relationships or supports. And it's like build upon that strength to expand your capacity, right? With the student success system. And so, it builds from strength. Do you have a specific example or two to share of how rural schools are working to use student success systems to improve student outcomes?

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (10:48.14)

It's been exciting to see this come to fruition in a couple different ways. One I will share is actually from a Grad Partnership Spotlight School, Demopolis High School in Alabama, who was one of the first schools that we were working with. And like a lot of rural schools, they have a smaller number of teachers than some of their urban counterparts. And so, they were trying to figure out how can we meet student needs without adding more people and how do we make the most of what we have. And so, they actually designed an entire building mentorship program to support students. And so, they did start by sort of looking at student need and creating tiers in sort of a traditional MTSS style, but they really wanted to make sure that it was more holistic than just sort of a spreadsheet that everyone was looking at in these meetings. And so, they really tapped their entire building to say, hey, from our bus drivers to our custodians to our teachers, we're all going to be these caring adults in the building for the students. It's not just the administration. It's not just the teachers. We want for all adults to feel that they're a part of creating a safe and successful and positive space for our students. And so, by thinking sort of outside of the box of what those traditional adult roles might be, they've really been able to sort of build a much stronger mentorship program by using the entire building than they would if they had sort of just thought of how do we get our teachers who are spending time with these students to do one, two, three. And that has been great for them. They found a lot of success both from the parent side um, and even from the teachers and staff are saying interacting with these students in sort of this mentorship framework outside of just academics or however else I see them has changed the way that I as an adult also understand and interact with these students because I know them more. I know what they're interested in, and I also know what some of their challenges might be. And so, it's been beneficial not only for the students to have a safe adult, but it's been beneficial for the adults as well to change the way in which they're interacting with these students.

Robert Balfanz (12:55.59)

Yeah, that's so powerful. I mean, we know that creating ways for adults and students to connect to each other as people, right? And not just as like the roles they play is so powerful. And as you said, it sort of builds on that rural strength, but it sort of makes it more systematic. 

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (13:05.037)

Yes.

Robert Balfanz (13:24.36)

So that's a wonderful example. 

I'm going to stay in this theme, but also just bring up chronic absenteeism, right? Which again, post the pandemic two-thirds of schools at the height of what it was at its highest had 20% or more of their kids chronically absent across the nation. So that means urban schools, rural schools, suburban schools, everybody was feeling this. Some for the first time and some as a continuation, as a continuing challenge. Do you have an example of how student success systems or some of the tools that have been built to go along with it helped some of the schools in your networks reduce chronic absenteeism?

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (13:54.934)

One thing that we found not just in rural schools, but in a lot of schools is that in the pandemic times, we often missed those opportunities for sort of extracurriculars or things that make school really fun, like the crispitos and debate that I just mentioned, right? You know? 

Robert Balfanz (14:09.97)

And the debate club, yep.

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke

And so, I think that in rural settings, sometimes if you have less budget and less people, sometimes those extracurricular programs are hard to sort of get off the ground and sustain and so, some of those went away in the pandemic. And so, it was really challenging to sort of unravel this ball of yarn of why are we seeing this um, challenge in chronic absenteeism and particularly in rural spaces. Sometimes the busing challenges and actually getting students to school can be part of the challenge um, in a rural context. But we also really need to think about what makes students even Taylor McCabe-Juhnke want to show up to school, right? It's also sort of the joy of connecting with your peers. And so, the fact that the student success system model has shown that that's actually research driven, right? That feeling connected and like you belong and like you have agency to choose some of what your day looks like, that that actually makes folks want to come to school. It seems really logical now that we sort of have unraveled this ball of yarn. And so...

Robert Balfanz (15:10.258)

Right. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (15:15.5)

What's been interesting is a great example is another school in Alabama is also working on doing sort some of this connectedness work to get their students to make sure they have something that they want to look forward to, to connect with their peers or to connect in sort of a not strictly academic way. And so, this is another spotlight school from the Grad Partnership. And they really took a spreadsheet and said, we're going to list all of our students and we're going to list which of them is we know is connected to some sort of activity. And their goal uh, was to then move that to 100% of students being connected. And they started with about 60% of students connected and they worked really hard. Um, And I think they most recently are at about 85 % of students connected in just one year. And so that has actually also really helped reduce their chronic absenteeism because these students now have, you know, in addition to support for transportation and otherwise, they have a reason outside of just academics that they want to come to school that makes them feel connected. And I love that that is also echoed in the research but makes a lot of sense in practice as well.

Robert Balfanz (16:27.346)

Yeah. And you think about it, right? It's the difference between like, well, school is a place I want to be. So of course, I'm going to like push through to get there or nobody knows me. Nobody really cares. Not much is happening. Why am I going there today? Right. It's like, that's, that's the difference between like pushing through some obstacles and sort of saying like, well, not today. and then the other thing I love about that story is that they were very creative in thinking of ways to engage and involve students, right? It wasn't necessarily like, we need to raise money to start all kinds of new opportunities, but it was like, how do we like, let more kids participate in things they're interested in by, creating ways for them to, you know, be the data person on the sports team or the videographer or things like that, where like, they could be part of an existing thing by just creating new roles.

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (17:23.948)

They had a specific student we got to meet with on the site visit who was really interested in sports, um but because of a physical disability was not able to play. And so, they really decided that that person needed to be a part of the team, and they created sort of a manager position, and that student got to travel with the team. They got to take videos um, and they did everything that the team did and so that was just a really great way where that didn't cost them really anything additional. It was a program that was already running, but just getting creative about how to make sure that everyone has a place that they can get connected into these types of opportunities. So, they did do a lot of creative pieces. There was one student as well we got to speak with who was not really interested in sports, which is a big thing in a lot of rural places that the community comes out, the students come out, you know, the sports is a big dang deal. And so, if that's not your number one favorite thing, you know, how do we make sure you still have something to do? But the student was really interested in drones. And so, they actually asked if he would be willing to volunteer to record their games using the drone and using technology. And so, it was just a cool way of making sure that there's something for everybody to make sure that they're a part of the broader school community as well.

Robert Balfanz (18:41.692)

And it also shows when everybody puts their heads together, to think of how can we, how can we find some new roles for our kids? And we get lots of people thinking on it, right? You get lots of good ideas. All right. I'm going to shift a little bit now from a, you know, particularly working with a particular school to this area where the Rural Schools Collaborative has really helped the Grad Partnership and others, you know, in the work to bring student success systems from a new to normal practice is through, you talked about a little bit in your intro, but that the use of local intermediary organizations to support schools, often across multiple districts, and implementing student success systems. So, can you share a little bit about how you're using intermediaries to help support student success systems and how it's working?

Taylor McCabe-Junke (19:27.734)

So, a lot of Rural Schools Collaborative’s work is built based on partnerships, as I mentioned, and that's because it really helps when you have sort of a local advocate who understands the opportunities, the challenges, some of the dynamics that are happening in these places to be able to sort of authentically create solutions that help serve the whole community. And so, with this framework in mind, we were able to do some of the Grad Partnership work with a couple of our existing, what we call regional hub partners. And so, we have North State Together, which is a rural serving nonprofit that's in partnership with Shasta College in far Northern California. And so, they have this interesting role of having a connection both with the community college, but also as sort of a nonprofit partner that can help deliver programming and connect folks back to the community college and outside of the community college. So they serve a 10 county, a really rural region in far Northern California, but they were really well positioned with their, you know, as a community college and also a nonprofit partner to already have these authentic relationships with school districts and with students to want to make sure that they knew the different opportunities that were available to them through the community college or through the nonprofit. And so, partners like that that already have these authentic relationships can really be incredible in terms of co -designing and delivering solutions that are much more successful than if a single school or a single principal tried to design them in their own. 

So, what's been great is that a partner like North State Together then can also get schools that are previously not talking with each other on a regular cadence to also come together in sort of a community of practice to say, hey, what are the challenges in your school? What are you learning? How can we work together? And so, they've recruited a cohort of 10 rural high schools in these different counties that have then been able to sort of devise their own student success systems. And, you know, as we're doing that continuous improvement piece, come back together and also say, hey, I heard you are doing this school-wide mentorship program. How can I do that at my school? Or, hey, I heard you did a survey about chronic absenteeism. Could I have a copy of that so we could start from there? 

And so, you also sort of get this interesting layers of connection, whether it's a school to a school that maybe previously wasn't working together or the school with a community partner like, you know, Shasta College or North State Together that can potentially provide some grant dollars or programming or support and structure. And then RSC and the Grad Partnership is also playing this interesting role of how do we take those stories and connections and share those broadly across the nation so that other folks can also learn from what's working, what's not working and not have to start from scratch. So, amazing layers of collaboration that happen when you work with these local intermediaries.

Robert Balfanz (22:24.54)

Yeah, I know. I think it was just so impressive about it and really speaks to what you were talking about, how it is both a powerful local strategy, but it just helps inform us more broadly about this idea of how we support, you know, scale of effective strategies. Because historically when people tried to scale things, they would say, here's what it is. Here's how you do it. Here's the implementation checklist to make sure you have high fidelity of implementation. And they would say, sort of say, good luck.

You know, then they would come back and say, well, you didn't have high fidelity of implementation so maybe you didn't get the same results others did, you know, and this, intermediary strategy is recognizing that it's, it's both much more complex than that, but in a way also more solvable that if you have local partners who know local context and can help, you know, translate what might be true in one place to how it could be true in that place and also learn, right, by doing and improve the system itself, right? Not just take it for what it was somewhere else, but even improve it more.  So, it's just such a powerful framework. And really what you're doing is you're creating like an ecosystem, right? Of both support locally and then out more broadly, right? Which makes this idea of scaling a much more living thing where people are actually engaged collectively as opposed to, you're just sort of a replicant of somebody else's idea, right?

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (23:59.66)

Absolutely. And I think to take this example even further, so there's a TRIO program that's affiliated with Shasta College. And so, they were already working with three rural high schools. And so, the TRIO program had originally been focused on sort of the juniors and seniors and making sure they're college ready. And because they were working with North State together on this project and their high school was participating in student success systems, the TRIO coordinators actually learned that they really need to be thinking about not just juniors and seniors, but how are we really reaching out to sort of eighth grade, freshmen, and sophomores because if we're only paying it sentence to them by the time they're juniors and seniors, you've kind of missed this opportunity to make sure that they're set up for success early. And so, it's just been interesting to see how, you know, North State Together as a nonprofit is learning from TRIO, is learning from the Grad Partnership schools. And so, you're also sort of, you know, helping folks that have even been doing this work for a long time kind of find some new ways of doing things and working collaboratively across these different institutions for the sake of their students. And that's been really exciting.

Robert Balfanz (25:03.324)

Yeah, no, that's been truly wonderful to see. Thank you, Taylor. This has been a great conversation. Is there anything else you'd like to share or tell our audience or are there websites for our listeners to visit and explore?

Taylor McCabe-Juhnke (25:19.148)

Yeah, I would just love to foreshadow that we are hoping to bring on um, at least five or six more of Rural Schools Collaborative's partners as intermediaries this year. They've been learning from the storytelling of the early pilots at the University of West Alabama and the Black Belt region, as well as North State Together, which I mentioned in California. But we really think that there's a place for all schools, all regions, to really think critically about how to do student success systems, whether it's rural, whether it's urban, um, and even these couple of pilot sites that we've been doing makes us even more excited to sort of bring this to scale with our network and also sort of just more broadly, how can we share these ideas with any other rural schools or intermediate advocates that are interested and want to get started? So, I think we've just seen the tip of the iceberg for how much of an impact this can have in these rural settings. And we're really excited. So, if you folks would like to follow along um, with the journey, we do have a weekly newsletter, and we do a lot of storytelling. Um, some of the stories we mentioned on the podcast today about how these schools have been doing their student success systems work. So, we'd love to invite folks to follow along at RuralSchoolsCollaborative.org. You can sign up for our newsletter or find us on social media as well. But it's really been an honor for us to share the stories of these schools, these students, and our uh, intermediary partners that are doing this work authentically in these rural contexts. So, we hope you all will be able to join along.

Robert Balfanz (26:45.862)

Yeah, folks really should.  It's a m[AL2] arvelous story experience learning that's going on with the Rural Schools Collaborative. It has something really to help everyone as Taylor said, you know, wherever you live in the nation, there's something you can learn by engaging with their work. So, in closing, as we heard today about the Rural Schools Collaborative’s efforts to bring student success systems to the nation's rural schools. This is essential work as too often national improvement efforts don't engage with our rural schools. Yet one in four of our nation's students can be found there. As importantly, as we have learned through the Rural School Collaborative’s efforts, rural school districts can be linked together through local intermediary [AL3] organizations to create powerful learning communities from which cutting edge solutions with applications nationwide emerge. This is such exciting work. 

We look forward to continuing to learn from the work of the Rural Schools Collaborative as it keeps working to bring student success systems to rural communities and the wisdom and insight from those communities to the nation.

As we close, we want to ask you to please subscribe to the Designing Education to stay up to date on all the revolutionary work happening in education. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a five-star review. Also, please share the show with a friend or colleague or on social media. This has been Robert Balfanz from the Everyone Graduates Center thanking everyone for listening today. I invite you to listen to the other episodes in our Designing Education series wherever you listen to your podcasts. Onward and be well.

 [AL1]Bob stutters a bit around here, not sure if it might be worth cutting out the "there was a little bit of" part or just leaving it in

 [AL2]bit of stuttering here

 [AL3]slight stutter here