In close collaboration with education leaders, AIR experts help clients use a seven-step, research-based continuous improvement process that enables educators to keep a close eye on at-risk students and to intervene early—and often—to improve student outcomes. AIR’s early warning system supports are designed to tie together a variety of initiatives to improve student outcomes.

AIR experts have been actively engaged with 31 states and more than 100 districts and schools in launching and implementing customized early warning systems.

Early Warning Intervention and Monitoring System (EWIMS) Implementation Guides

Guides our experts developed for the National High School Center have been downloaded and used in hundreds of schools across the country. These guides describe the setup and use of the EWIMS process based on data-driven decision-making research. The aim of the guides is to support school and district efforts to systematically identify students who are showing signs of being off track in school (an early indicator of risk for achieving key educational milestones like on-time graduation), match these students with appropriate interventions, and monitor students’ progress within those interventions.

• High School Early Warning Intervention and Monitoring System Implementation Guide (Updated June 2020, PDF)
• Middle Grades Early Warning Intervention Monitoring System Implementation Guide (2013, PDF)

Getting Students on Track for Graduation: Impacts of the Early Warning Intervention and Monitoring System After One Year

This study examined the impact and implementation of one early warning system on student and school outcomes, and provides rigorous initial evidence that even with limited implementation during the first year of adoption, using a comprehensive early warning system can reduce the percentage of students who are chronically absent or who fail one or more courses.

Video Series: Early Warning Intervention and Monitoring System

This video series, a collaborative effort by the Great Lakes Comprehensive Center and the Michigan Department of Education, covers the process of installing EWIMS.

Approaches to Dropout Prevention: Heeding Early Warning Signs With Appropriate Interventions

Approaches to Dropout Prevention: Heeding Early Warning Signs With Appropriate Interventions (PDF) outlines steps that schools can take to identify at-risk students and provide the necessary support systems and relevant interventions to assist students in obtaining a high school diploma. Further, the report discusses the use of early warning data systems to target interventions for groups and individual students, offers a variety of best practice approaches undertaken by higher-performing high schools, and presents effective programs that are currently being implemented to stem the dropout problem.