John Murray, AdvancePath’s Chairman and CEO, said, “The dropout problem in the United States continues to create major challenges for education, communities and societies as a whole - especially among minority populations. Despite many years of visibility, the dropout numbers remain high, and are expected to continue to do so, unless we can unite the resources and creativity of the private sector in partnership with the know-how and dedication of public education. At AdvancePath, we partner with school districts to provide communities a new path for out-of-school youth and disengaged students to earn their high school diploma. Education is a societal issue and is the responsibility of not only educators, but of businesses, community organizations, families, and the students themselves. We’re all in this together.”
ScholarCentric has a very powerful research-based and validated, socio-emotional assessment and predictive analytics tool that can identify student’s socio-emotional needs and which students are likely to be at-risk of dropping out of, or failing in, high school. ScholarCentric’s tools can also identify which students will face the biggest challenges transitioning between schools – elementary to middle and middle to high school. ScholarCentric’s teacher Professional Development and student resiliency curriculum are deployed to help teachers be better prepared to meet their students’ needs and provide socio-emotional supports for students. ScholarCentric’s assessment and predictive analytics system is more powerful and reliable than the conventional “ABC” method of identifying at-risk students - attendance, behavior and course grades - because it helps provide school staff a root cause analysis that can better help schools provided targeted interventions to support student SEL needs.
AdvancePath operates in-school high and middle school Academies and whole school alternative education program, through public private partnerships with school districts, deploying its research-based model and services and utilizing district teachers. In 2009, the California State Attendance Review Board (SARB) recommended AdvancePath as a “model program”. In 2012 AdvancePath won a National Dropout Prevention Network (NDPN) Crystal Star Award for best research-based at-risk intervention and dropout recovery program. NDPN subsequently named AdvancePath as an NDPN model program. In 2013 AdvancePath’s programs were nationally accredited by AdvancED with high ratings - 92% academic success, 85% college and career readiness, 84% parent satisfaction and 90% teacher satisfaction. Having successfully worked with over 24,000 students to date, AdvancePath Academies demonstrate that all students can learn and succeed in the right environment.
Together, AdvancePath with its range of proven programmatic solutions and ScholarCentric with its ability to identify and the most at-risk students and provide Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) supports will provide more comprehensive solutions to better meet the needs of educators and their students.
Mr. Murray continued, “Not only is the ScholarCentric SEL Assessment and Predictive Analytics tool unique in the industry, they have a team of experienced and dedicated staff, similar in many ways to the AdvancePath team, who care deeply about the districts and students they serve. All of us at AdvancePath look forward to forming a unified organization that is able to leverage those experiences and character traits to further help us achieve our mission – “To Enrich Lives and Improve Society through Education – One Student at a Time”.”
Leise Roberts, the COO of ScholarCentric, commented, “We are excited to join forces with AdvancePath and confident that once we identify at-risk students within our partner districts we will be able to offer a broader range of validated academic and support services. The cost of a student dropping out, on both a personal and societal level, is very significant. Anything that can be done to reduce the dropout rate not only positively affects the lives of students and their current and future families; it will have a long- lasting positive impact on our communities’ stability and safety.”
Mrs. Roberts added, “We are proud to continue our association with Dr. Scott Solberg and his groundbreaking research on student resiliency. Dr. Solberg’s work clearly proves that resiliency is critical to student success in the classroom and in life. Our collaboration with him has demonstrated that we can identify weaknesses in student resiliency, provide the necessary interventions and make a difference in students’ lives. By working with AdvancePath we will be able to bring this powerful message and the corresponding results to more school districts and students than ever before.”
Parchman, Vaughan & Co., LLC acted as advisor to ScholarCentric.
About AdvancePath Academics, Inc.AdvancePath Academics, Inc., partners with school districts to provision and operate learning centers (AdvancePath Academies) co-located on high school campuses to recover, educate, and graduate disengaged, at-risk, and out-of-school youth. At the core of the AdvancePath model is the belief that all students have individual learning styles and needs, and that not all students are suited to the traditional mainstream high school environment.
About ScholarCentricScholarCentric provides educators with innovative solutions to assess and teach six critical social and emotional skills that have been proven to improve student engagement, achievement, and graduation rates. Through a research-validated predictive assessment that identifies which students are at risk and why; research-based curricula that guides students to understand the importance of education and set attainable goals; and comprehensive professional development, ScholarCentric ensures that all students have the support, knowledge and confidence they need to be successful in school and beyond.
About Parchman VaughanParchman Vaughan & Company, LLC is an investment bank that specializes in the education sector and is located in Baltimore, Maryland.
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