Why RISE?

Addressing Missed Connections

All educators aim to connect students to the resources, experiences, and opportunities they need to be successful. However, schools in high-need communities often experience challenges that leave some students disconnected from their goals for college and career success. For example, teachers want to engage students in deeper learning, but the average educator must spend their own money to outfit their classrooms, and many educators do not have access to the information, tools, and peer network they need and deserve as professionals. Educators want to provide personalized support to ensure students navigate the transitions from middle school to high school and later to college and career, yet Connecticut’s student-to-counselor ratio of 466:1 far exceeds the 250:1 national standard, 1 forcing educators to make difficult tradeoffs in meeting student needs.

Because of the disconnect between students’ ambitions and the supports and resources available to them, far too few students achieve their dreams of a higher education. Persistent opportunity gaps disadvantage low-income students, Black/Latino students, and students with special needs. In Connecticut: • Only three-quarters of low-income students graduate from high school within four years. • Only one in five low-income high school graduates will earn a post-secondary degree within six years of graduating from high school, compared to roughly half of their more affluent peers.

By 2025, more than 70% of Connecticut’s jobs will require

education beyond high school. 2

1 ASCA. State-by-State Student-to-Counselor Report. https://www.schoolcounselor.org/asca/media/asca/Publications/ratioreport.pdf 2 Connecticut Business & Industry Association. Strategic Master Plan for Higher Education in Connecticut. Hartford, Connecticut. 2015. http://www2.cbia.com/govaff//pdf/2015/highereducationcommission.pdf

Better Together

Through the RISE Network, teachers, counselors, and administrators collaborate across schools and districts to ensure Connecticut high school students graduate college and career ready.

We believe that top-down mandates and frequent policy shifts are unlikely to create the sustained outcomes we seek for all students; we must invest in school communities to create lasting improvements.

RISE connects educators in different communities to one another and to critical supports, resources, and information. Our cross-district learning community empowers educators to amplify their individual and collective impact by pursuing shared goals. Together, we ensure that all students stay connected and engaged in school and achieve postsecondary success.

In 2019, RISE connected:

• 5,000+ students to personalized supports to strengthen their transition to high school and postsecondary opportunities through the RISE by 5 strategies

• 1,200+ educators to secure, actionable, and timely information through our data dashboards developed in collaboration with teachers, counselors, and administrators

• 219 educators to over $200,000 in resources through the Educator Innovation

Fund in partnership with the Dalio Foundation, supporting 488 unique projects designed to increase student engagement and achievement