Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research recently published a case study highlighting the impactful, data-driven collaboration between Meriden Public Schools and RISE’s Applied Data Manager, Ellen Fugate. The Harvard case study outlines Fugate’s collaboration with Maloney High School and Platt High School, resulting in improved Grade 9 on-track rates and increased student engagement through the use of innovative data tools, protocols and systems. It states, “The work of Fugate, RISE, and the Meriden schools became both a test case and example of how data can combine with high-touch support models to ultimately move the needle on an issue of national importance.”
Before becoming RISE’s Applied Data Manager, Fugate was a Data Fellow in Harvard’s two-year Strategic Data Project, a program that trains data strategists to help education organizations like RISE use data to identify challenges and problem-solve to improve student outcomes. In addition to celebrating Meriden’s early results, the article captures Fugate’s advice for driving conversations with data and implementing teacher teams, two critical ingredients in her and the RISE team’s work in Meriden and across the network. “Ellen has been an incredible asset to our On-Track work at MHS,” said Maloney High School Assistant Principal Erin Lyons-Barton. “Her background in teaching combined with her data analysis skills have been one of the major keys to our success with 9th graders promoting at Maloney.”