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The National High School Center's Early Warning System (EWS) Middle Grades Tool enables schools and districts to identify students who may be at risk for academic failure and to monitor these students’ responses to interventions. The tool relies on student level data available at the school or district including indicators for attendance, course failures, and behavior (if available) to calculate potential risk for eventual dropping out. The intended purpose is to support students with an increased risk of academic failure, in order to get them back on track for academic success and eventual graduation.
The EWS Middle Grades Tool and supporting documents can be downloaded below.
PC: Excel 2003 or later.
Mac: Excel 11.0 (part of Office 2004) or Excel 14.0 (part of Office 2011).
Please note: the EWS Middle Grades Tool cannot be run in Excel 12.0 (part of Office 2008) as this version does not support Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros.
Functionality and features of the EWS Middle Grades Tool
- Customize the tool settings to reflect the local context (e.g., student demographics, number of grading periods, and kindergarten cut-off date);
- Modify the benchmarks/thresholds for indicators based on analysis of longitudinal data;
- Integrate locally validated incoming risk status indicators, such as attendance, to identify students who may need additional support;
- Identify at-risk students based on a kindergarten cut-off date which determines whether a student is two years or more over the typical age for middle grades enrollment;
- Import student-level data from existing data systems;
- Group students with a customizable cohort variable;
- House an inventory of interventions available to students;
- Assign and monitor student interventions over time; and
- Produce reports including student- and school-level data summaries (both pre-programmed and custom).
| National High School Center Early Warning System Middle Grades Tool Technical Manual | ||
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The National High School Center Early Warning System Middle Grades Tool Technical Manual is available to help districts and schools understand and effectively use the EWS Middle Grades Tool. The Technical Manual instructs users on setting up and navigating the tool, inputting data, printing reports, and avoiding common technological pitfalls. (May 2012) | |
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Source File Templates Before they can be imported into the EWS Middle Grades Tool, these data source files need to be saved as comma-separated values (.csv) or tab delimited (.txt) files. To convert an Excel file to either format, open the file and click 'Save As' under the 'File' tab. In the dialog box, specify a unique name in the 'File name:' field. In the 'Save as type:' field, select 'CSV (comma delimited)' or 'Text (Tab delimited)' from the drop-down menu. In cases that the data include commas, use the tab delimited option. |
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Source Files with Sample Data These data source files are pre-loaded with sample data, and can be imported into the EWS Middle Grades Tool in order to preview how the tool works. These files are saved as comma-separated values (.csv) files. These files represent a school that records attendance on a quarterly basis and course grades each semester, so the tool should be set to a quarter system on the Tool Settings page. Please view the Tool Setup File for tool settings needed for use with the sample data. |
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Early Warning Systems for High School and the Middle Grades This brochure details what early warning systems are and how they can be used to identify and support students who are at risk of school dropout. It provides a brief overview of the EWS High School and Middle Grades Tools, as well as the Early Warning Intervention and Monitoring System (EWIMS) process. (February 2012) |
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