Learn about a partnership to support students

A recently issued report from the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS) shows a dramatic increase in the number of adults who stepped up to serve as mentors, tutors, student success coaches, and more, in the 2022-23 school year, marking substantial progress toward President Biden’s goal of boosting schools’ capacity by 250,000 adults over three years. In this Q&A, Jonathan Raymond, City Year’s senior vice president of education policy and systems change, shares more details about the NPSS, which City Year helped to develop and launch, and the report’s findings and why City Year’s involvement in this partnership is so important.

What is the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS)?

The NPSS was established in response to the learning impact of the COVID pandemic, to help schools, educators, communities, and families get connected to and have access to the holistic supports – academic, social, and emotional – that students need to thrive. It is a public-private partnership between the Biden-Harris Administration – led by the Department of Education and AmeriCorps – and leading national education and youth-serving organizations, including City Year. Through its “hub” at the Everyone Graduates Center located at Johns Hopkins University, the NPSS provides technical supports focused on five key areas: mentoring, tutoring, wraparound support services, student success coaches, and postsecondary transitions. Like City Year, the NPSS wants to ensure that every student, including those furthest from opportunity, get what they need to realize their potential and thrive.

Why is City Year’s involvement in this partnership so important?

Being part of the NPSS partnership is important for several reasons. City Year gets to partner with other mission-aligned organizations and work together to bring more holistic supports to students, schools, and communities across the country. City Year can also test the organizing frameworks for implementing a successful student success model beyond the context of a City Year site, helping to refine and improve the student success coach model. By engaging with other organizations interested in implementing a student success coach model, City Year enables more young people, particularly people of color, to serve in and experience the power of service through AmeriCorps and other service programs.

What was the focus of the recent NPSS survey?

The survey of public-school principals aimed to learn more about the progress schools are making in providing more holistic supports needed to help students thrive post-pandemic. The findings revealed that an additional 187,000 adults provided high-intensity tutoring, mentoring and student success coaching in schools in the 2022-23 school year, which brings us much closer to the Biden-Harris Administration three-year goal of adding 250,000 adults in these roles by summer 2025.

What did we learn from the survey that relates to City Year’s work in schools?

While the survey did not specifically discuss the impact of student success coaching, the report does demonstrate that schools are deploying more adults to support students with their academic, social, and emotional needs, which is an important and promising finding. The NPSS is looking to replicate this survey in the future, and we expect that this effort will yield more details about the impact of student success coaches.

How does City Year’s growing focus on education policy tie to the NPSS, and what this can mean for advancing our mission?

Advancing education policy is important to City Year’s expanding mission to expand educational equity and develop diverse leaders.

As a partner in the NPSS, and with our involvement in studies like this one, City Year has an opportunity to help address some of the most pressing issues facing young people today. Advancing educational equity is central to City Years’ impact and we cannot do this work alone. Partnerships like NPSS are opportunities to broaden City Year’s learning, reach, and ability to continuously improve what we do. Whether at the national, state, or local levels, working and learning with others enables City Year to create programs and services to better engage and prepare our AmeriCorps members for education and careers while helping the students we work with thrive. Simply put – partnerships like NPSS allow us to live an important City Year value – Ubuntu – “I am because we are.”