Bates White partnered with Higher Achievement on two projects that helped increase transparency of information for students in Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD, and illustrated the success of Higher Achievement students in the Richmond Achievement Centers. Both projects were done through Bates White’s pro bono program.
First, the Bates White team developed dashboards to enhance the decision-making process for scholars and their families regarding high school placement. The team compiled information from various publicly available data sources and designed user-friendly dashboards. These dashboards provide Higher Achievement mentors, which include Bates White employees, with essential data about schools in the DC and Baltimore areas (one dashboard for each region), allowing them to show scholars important information, such as acceptance rates, distance, courses offered, whether it is a single-gender school, whether Higher Achievement alumni attended, and other such details. The dashboards are specifically designed to help mentors effectively filter and visualize the data to assist in finding the schools that best match their mentees’ needs and goals. Bates White will update and improve the dashboards based on user experiences.
Second, another Bates White team analyzed demographics and graduation rates of scholars in Higher Achievement’s Richmond Achievement Centers. The Bates White team facilitated identification and transmittal of detailed student-level data from the Richmond school district. These data, combined with publicly available data from the Virginia Department of Education, allowed the team to analyze and compare student outcomes between Higher Achievement scholars and the broader student population. The team found that Higher Achievement scholars had a substantially higher graduation rate and were more likely to engage in advanced studies. The project concluded with a presentation to Higher Achievement Richmond’s leadership team and included easily understood visualizations to make the results of the team’s analysis accessible to a broader audience.
Dr. Toni Woodlon, Executive Director for the Baltimore Higher Achievement office, thanked the team for “such a comprehensive dashboard,” which Lynsey Wood Jeffries, CEO of Higher Achievement, said is “a game-changer for our middle school scholars and their families.” She continued, “It equips our staff and mentors to better support their high school choice process—so that they stay on track to college. We will be able to share this resource with hundreds, maybe thousands, more middle schoolers in the years to come, as we expand our model.”
The Bates White team included Neb Hrmjez, Amanda Kurzenfoerfer, Brian McClelland, Aparna Sengupta, and Mengli Sha.