Press Release

Partnership for Student Success Announces New Phase of Coalition’s Work

19 March 2025 | Baltimore, MD – The Partnership for Student Success (PSS) announced today the launch of the next phase of its work, building on the momentum of the National Partnership for Student Success. Based at the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, the PSS will focus on expanding evidence-based K-12 student supports nationwide. It will achieve this by strengthening local collaboration between K-12, higher education, and nonprofit organizations and engaging more people to support students in their communities.

The PSS coalition–which currently engages over 225 nonprofit organizations, 200 school districts, and 75 higher education institutions–has a new vision that every student has the support they need to succeed and thrive. Its mission is to help schools, educators, and communities connect all students with comprehensive, evidence-based, people-powered supports to help them learn and achieve their potential.

Between 2025 and 2027, the PSS aims to expand evidence-based supports—including high-impact tutoring, mentoring, student success coaching, postsecondary transition coaching, and wraparound services—to more students nationwide. Progress will be measured annually through a spring survey of school principals to assess whether more students are receiving the supports they need.

In addition to its new vision, mission, and two-year goal, the PSS also announced a set of actions and resources to kick off its next phase. These include:

New training resources including free online training modules for postsecondary transition coaches and mentors supporting K-12 students. These training modules were developed by the University of California San Diego Early Academic Outreach Program and MENTOR for the PSS. Individuals and programs placing college students and others in mentoring, postsecondary transition coaching, or college and career advising roles can learn more and sign up for the upcoming pilot or summer, fall, or spring training cohorts here.
A new toolkit for districts and nonprofits on Federal Work-Study partnerships, offering guidance on how to collaborate with higher education institutions to place college students in high-impact P-12 student support roles with Federal Work-Study funding. This resource supplements resources targeted at higher education institutions on forming partnerships and utilizing Federal Work-Study funding. It also supports local collaboration around this longstanding federal funding source. Read the toolkit here.
A new consortium to develop additional free training materials for postsecondary transition coaches and college and career advisors supporting K-12 students. The consortium–which includes experts in postsecondary transition coaching, school counseling, career advising, financial aid, and more–will comprehensively review existing free, publicly available, and high-quality training materials, identify unmet needs, and develop additional training materials to fill these gaps. Learn more about PSS’ training efforts here.
A new working group focused on supporting students in rural areas. Based on feedback from coalition members–who identified that supporting P-12 students in rural areas is an increasingly important area of focus–the PSS is launching a new working group to convene nonprofits, districts, and higher education institutions to discuss the implementation of evidence-based student supports in rural areas, specifically utilizing college students as sources of people-power. Express interest in joining the working group here.
New research on people-powered student supports nationwide through a third annual survey of public school principals, which we plan to field through RAND’s American School Leader Panel in Spring 2025. The survey will gather information from a nationally representative sample of public school principals on the use and growth of high-intensity tutoring, mentoring, student success coaching, college and career advising, and wraparound supports in their schools in the current 2024-25 school year. Johns Hopkins University researchers plan to analyze data from the survey and publish a report on its results in Fall 2025, including comparisons to data from Spring 2023 and Spring 2024 survey data. A de-identified data file from the survey will be made publicly available for other researchers to use in 2026. Read last year’s report here.

For more information, visit www.partnershipstudentsuccess.org.