As more districts set ambitious goals to increase their high school graduation rates and ensure that all students graduate ready for success in college, they increasingly rely on early warning or college readiness indicator systems to assess which students need supports and what school-level strategies to pursue. By organizing information on student performance into indicators using readily available data, indicator systems are a potentially powerful tool for guiding strategic action to improve student and school outcomes.
While the use of indicators has been widely embraced, it is not always clear how to use indicators in ways that will lead to better educational attainment. Decisions about which indicators are the best to use depend on how they are being used, and questions about how to use indicators depend on the choice of indicators...