Press Release

Partnership for Student Success Marks Fourth Year of Coalition to Expand Evidence-Based K-12 Student Supports

8 July 2025 | Baltimore, MD – As it enters its fourth year, the Partnership for Student Success (PSS) announced new actions and resources, deepening its commitment to ensuring that every student has a caring adult supporting their education. Based at the Johns Hopkins University Everyone Graduates Center, the PSS is a coalition of school districts, nonprofits, and higher education institutions focused on engaging more people in P-12 student support roles as tutors, mentors, student success coaches, postsecondary transition coaches, and wraparound support coordinators.

Since its formation in 2022, the coalition, its members, and networks have worked in schools, out-of-school time programs, and communities across the country to drive tangible change. Over the past three years, the coalition has:

  • Grown to include over 230 supporting champion organizations, 70 higher education institutions, and over 200 school districts, each of which has played a key role in mobilizing additional people to provide evidence-based support to students.
  • Provided thousands of hours of technical assistance support to schools, districts, nonprofits, and higher education institutions working to implement, expand, or improve evidence-based and people-powered student supports in their local communities, including through working groups and learning communities.
  • Conducted research indicating that these and other efforts led to an increase in the number of estimated adults serving in tutoring, mentoring, college and career advising, and wraparound support roles in schools by 323,000 between fall 2022 and spring 2024, marking a significant expansion of these supports to students across the country.

Today, the PSS announced a set of new actions and resources to support the expansion of evidence-based and people-powered K-12 student supports nationwide. These include:

  • Expanded implementation pathways for engaging college students in evidence-based P-12 student supports through the PSS Higher Education Coalition. In addition to continuing existing resources for higher education institutions working to place more college students in evidence-based P-12 student support roles through Federal Work-Study funding, the PSS will expand its efforts to focus on community-engaged learning coursework and career-connected learning. By expanding its focus, PSS will uplift more opportunities for college students to support local P-12 students in evidence-based roles. Learn more and join the coalition.
  • A new brief on strategies for engaging high school students in evidence-based roles supporting other students. This brief highlights models for how high school students can be meaningfully engaged in evidence-based roles supporting other students. It offers strategies to implement and sustain effective peer programming, examples illustrating how schools and nonprofits successfully engage high school students in peer support roles, and suggestions to help schools, districts, and nonprofits design and implement these models. Read the brief.
  • A research-to-practice webinar series for districts and youth-serving nonprofits. The series of webinars will share timely research on topics related to the implementation of evidence-based P-12 student supports, paired with district examples applying research to practice in communities. The first webinar, Implementing Virtual Tutoring with Quality will take place on July 24th from 2:00 – 3:00pm ET. Register for the webinar. Future topics will be announced monthly through the fall.
  • A series of two-page briefs outlining the research behind tutoring, mentoring, postsecondary transition coaching, and wraparound/integrated student supports. These briefs, prepared in collaboration with the National Student Support Accelerator, MENTOR, the National College Attainment Network, and Communities In Schools respectively, can be used by districts and youth-serving nonprofits to access relevant research and make the case for sustaining these evidence-based supports in their communities.
  • Publicly available training modules for mentors supporting K-12 students. Through a collaboration with MENTOR, PSS has made two training modules for mentors available for public use. These modules, focused on Mentoring 101 and Building Positive Relationships, developed by MENTOR with support from Microsoft, provide evidence-based strategies for youth mentors. Access the modules in the PSS Training Resource Library.
  • Launch of an Advisory Committee to inform the future direction of the coalition and ensure that its activities continue to meet the needs of districts, youth-serving nonprofits, and higher education institutions working to implement, expand, or improve evidence-based and people-powered supports for K-12 students. The advisory committee includes an initial group of 22 organizations ranging from national to local, and representing a range of stakeholders. Learn more about the Advisory Committee.

      For more information, visit www.partnershipstudentsuccess.org.

      Media contact: PS_Success@jh.edu

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