In November 2025, the Partnership for Student Success (PSS) announced the publication of a new report, Are K-12 Students Getting the Evidence-Based Supports They Need? Progress and Challenges Four Years After the Pandemic. The report, authored by Dr. Robert Balfanz and Vaughan Byrnes of the Everyone Graduates Center at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education, analyzes findings from a third annual nationally representative survey of K-12 public school principals, fielded by the RAND Corporation in partnership with PSS, to examine the deployment of evidence-based student supports and evolving student need.
The report concludes that four years after the height of the pandemic, there is widespread use of evidence-based and people-powered student supports–such as high-intensity tutoring, mentoring, student success coaching, postsecondary transition coaching, and wraparound supports–in public schools across the United States. But, public school principals indicate that continued growth in these interventions is needed to meet the scale of student needs.
The report emphasizes that while implementation barriers exist to expanding evidence-based programs, there is a subset of schools that are proving that serving students at scale is possible, and outlines a range of resources and opportunities to support expansion of high-quality programs.
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