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Nearly 30% of Washington’s students do not graduate on time with their peers, and the consequences are serious for both the individual and for society. Thus, dropout prevention, intervention and retrieval is a hot topic. Much attention has been given to the potential benefits of creating an effective early warning system to identify students most at risk of not graduating from high school.
Guided by current national research and the recommendations of the Washington State Building Bridges Early Warning Data Subcommittee, OSPI and ESD 113 along with the Shelton School District came together last year to develop and implement a Dropout Early Warning and Intervention System (DEWIS). DEWIS is modeled after and embedded into the Response to Intervention (RTI) model that has been implemented in the Shelton School District. DEWIS was initially developed as an early warning system for dropouts at the middle and high school levels and was piloted in a Shelton high school junior high and alternative school. This year it is being piloted at the elementary level.
Goals of the intervention process are threefold: to provide the appropriate level of intervention along with ongoing monitoring to individual students, to provide documentation of interventions that have been provided in a school or as students move between buildings and/or districts, and to assess the effectiveness of various interventions.
For information, contact Lynn Nelson, ESD 113 school nurse corps director, at (360) 464-6866 or lnelson@esd113.k12.wa.us, or check the OSPI “DEWIS Guide,” at htttp://www.k12.wa.us/BuildingBridges/resources.aspx.
AESD Role, Strategic Plan and Constitution
