Most college access programs are familiar with both the concept of summer melt and how to combat it, but K-12 districts and schools addressing this phenomenon remains relatively uncommon.
A new NCAN brief offers insights and lessons from K-12 practitioners who implemented a text messaging intervention for summer melt prevention.
District and school leaders, school counselors, and other K-12 practitioners considering how to help their graduating seniors take their next steps should consult this new resource.
Text Steps was a project piloted by Ascendium Education Group in 2015 and expanded to 13 school districts in Wisconsin between 2018 and 2020. Its goal was to combat summer melt through a texting program. "Schools Can Stop Summer Melt: Lessons Learned from the Wisconsin Text Steps Project" considers
the experiences of district- and school-level practitioners in planning and implementing a summer melt intervention. Their perspectives are specific to the Text Steps project, but there are broader lessons for other practitioners about advisable approaches
and avoidable pitfalls while pursuing similar efforts elsewhere.
Survey data from, and individual interviews with, practitioners in districts and schools inform this brief, as do project plans and materials received from the districts themselves. These data and materials were collected in spring 2021. To promote the
importance of practitioner voice, this brief leans heavily on respondents’ own words.
The key lessons practitioners can learn from this brief include:
Successful summer melt interventions require the buy-in of both district and school leadership and frontline staff members.
Students’ postsecondary outcomes data are key for understanding an intervention’s success. But working with these data may be unfamiliar for some practitioners, and prior planning to develop a data collection and analysis plan is important.
The conditions that lead to summer melt will start before the summer, and the activities that will prevent it should take place year-round.
Although some elements of summer melt interventions are near-universal, districts and schools should adapt their program to their specific context, criteria, and culture.
Given recent declines in fall postsecondary enrollment, and especially the inequitable outcomes of students based on family income, race, and ethnicity, it is important for the K-12 sector to understand how it can best help students bridge the gap between
high school graduation and postsecondary matriculation.
School districts measured impacts to their students’ postsecondary outcomes through the National Student Clearinghouse’s StudentTracker for High Schools service. Ascendium Education Group compared the postsecondary outcomes of students from the high school
classes of 2018 (the baseline) and 2019 (who received the Text Steps intervention).
The average fall enrollment rate across the 13 districts was 54% for the class of 2019, up 3 percentage points from the class of 2018.
Students of color and economically disadvantaged students who enrolled in the Text Steps project saw sizable enrollment rate increases. Participating districts’ students of color from the class of 2018 had a 40% fall enrolment rate, and those from the
class of 2019 had a 45% enrollment rate, but 65% of students of color participating in Text Steps enrolled in fall 2019. Economically disadvantaged Text Steps participants had a 64% fall enrollment rate compared to 37% for the class of 2018 and 39%
for the class of 2019.
The results above suggest that the K-12 sector can implement summer melt prevention programming that will significantly impact students’ postsecondary outcomes.
NCAN will discuss the lessons learned from the brief and share other summer melt resources during a members-only webinar on Sept. 23 at 2 p.m. ET. (Members: To register, please
check the weekly webinars email or Success Digest.)
The brief was authored by Dr. Irene M. Sanchez, an education leader, teacher, consultant, writer, speaker, workshop facilitator, and award-winning writer and poet.
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