Our Impact

When we founded RISE, we started with a small network of schools with the goal of proving what’s possible for high school success. RISE high schools work together to ensure all students experience success as they transition to, through, and beyond high school by using data to pinpoint needs, form hypotheses, and pursue ideas to advance student achievement. Partner schools have improved Grade 9 promotion rates while also decreasing subgroup gaps and increasing school-wide graduation and college access rates. In 2021, the RISE Network was honored to receive the Carnegie Foundation’s annual Spotlight on Quality in Continuous Improvement recognition.

We are proud of our progress over the past few years and as we look ahead, we are excited to focus on excellence in all that we do by pursuing consistent and strong implementation and deeper student impact.

Student Outcomes

The RISE Network’s focus on key transitions—navigating the middle to high school transition and preparing for post-secondary success—has yielded positive results.

  • Improved On-Track Achievement: Grade 9 on-track rates have improved by 17 percentage points network-wide from 64% to 81%.
  • Higher Graduation Rates: Four-year high school graduation rates have increased by 11 points from 78% to 89%. Meanwhile, statewide graduation rates have remained relatively flat.
  • Increased College Readiness: College-readiness rates for students in Grades 9 through 12 is up 8 points from 26% to 34%. High school GPA (B’s or better or 3.0+ unweighted GPA) is one of the strongest predictors of college enrollment and completion.
  • Higher College Access Rates: More students are accessing college opportunities. FAFSA completion rates are up 14 points from 51% to 65%. FAFSA unlocks resources to make college a more attainable option.

Educator Feedback

The RISE Network leverages the collective wisdom, diverse experiences and perspectives, and creative ideas of hundreds of educators. We are constantly seeking feedback from educators to ensure that our programming and capacity-building efforts are meeting their needs. Here’s what educators had to say about their experiences with RISE.

  • “The Connecticut RISE Network has truly allowed me as a leader to help my team and schools to realign and redesign our approaches to supporting students.” – District Administrator
  • “Our partnership with RISE has been wonderful. The [postsecondary] tracker is a really good example of something we didn’t have in place before. RISE provides the technological support to help us put that kind of tracking system in place, which is complex.” – High School Principal
  • “[RISE] provides a lot of really important data that drives the way in which we conduct our meetings, that drives the interventions that we put in place for ninth graders, and that drives the way that we think about the work that we do.” – High School Assistant Principal
  • “RISE has built our team’s capacity to use data to inform decisions and expand our efforts to ensure students are on-track for graduation. This led to an increase in our freshman on-track rates and improved systems to address student engagement.” – High School Administrator
  • “The RISE Network has really shaped how I approach my job… [RISE] brings together educators from all over, with all different backgrounds, to solve the really heavy-hitting problems in our schools.” – High School Counselor