Membership Application for NASS 2005

Our country’s education statistics are staggering. Every nine seconds a student becomes a dropout. Less than 50% of Black and 53% of Hispanic students are earning their high school diploma. For male dropouts ages 25-34, society pays an estimated $944 billion over the course of their lifetime through income supports and approximately 59% of federal inmates are dropouts. (Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities Are Reconnecting Out-of-School Youth)

The National Association of Street Schools exists for these very students, working nationwide to meet the challenges of at-risk youth by developing a network of schools that provide personalized, comprehensive education, a moral code, and tools for self-sufficiency. Our purpose is to facilitate the development of street schools around the country that serve as educational intensive care units for those being left behind.

Schools belonging to the National Association of Street Schools are all Christian schools, though differentiated from regular Christian schools by the type of student they target for admittance. NASS is not affiliated with a particular church or denomination, therefore, does not espouse a particular denominational doctrine, and is not financially supported by a particular denomination. NASS schools do adhere to both a general statement of Christian faith and an Essentials/Non-essentials document that describes the spiritual approach we take with students (both documents can be found in the Appendix).

A NASS school is differentiated from other Christian schools in that the NASS design facilitates access for all, regardless of race, religion, sex, academic or economic status. Acceptance of the student where they are is a defining characteristic of a NASS school.

This also means that the schools are primarily privately funded, and recieves no public school monies (vouchers and faith-based funds may become an exception to this). NASS, then, is concerned with supporting individual schools with fundraising and operation as a 501 c (3) non-profit organization.

The ministry focus affects staff recruitment, staff motivation, worldview perspective, the dynamics of the caring environment, the philosophy of student change, the selection of curriculum and outside partnerships, and is seen as the most powerful influence on healing students, helping them transform their lives, and sustaining that transformation into the future.

Working nationwide to meet the challenges of at-risk youth by developing a network of schools that provide personalized education, a moral code, and tools for self-sufficiency.

The NASS School Instructional Design Model
This is a student-centered design that allows for schools to continually serve their students better and improve their school. For a graphic of the model, please see Appendix C.

Finding Out Where Each Student Is During The Enrollment Process
The process begins with a series of diagnostic tools, including an initial interview, various academic and personal assessments of strength and growth areas that form a baseline of assessment in each of the four instructional areas: academic development, student support and social skill development, career pathway/economic literacy development, and spiritual development. In addition to creating a baseline for measurement, this data can be used to create the Student Learning Plan and can be a factor in determining overall school design.

Assigning an Advocate
Each student is assigned an advocate who is a teacher or staff member at the school. The Advocate is the person who knows the most about a particular student. In addition to facilitating and leading the collaboration for the Student Learning Plan, this person records relevant data on the student management software. The Advocate gets to know the student personally in a deeply committed way that often lasts years beyond graduation. Examples of some of the actions of Advocates:

Student and Local School Adaptation of Design
Starting with the needs of each individual student allows each school to adapt instructional strategies to meet the particular needs of the students at particular points in time. This yields the benefit of always having the instructional strategies, both in the Student Learning Plan and in the local school design, meet the current needs of the students in attendance and allows for strategies to vary within the overall design elements of the model in differing locations nationally.

Student Learning Plans: A Critical Part of a Student Management System
The results of the student intake are recorded in the student management software system (SS Tracker), and the advocate records this and other relevant information as a part of the ongoing monitoring of each student. Concurrently, the Student Learning Plan is developed with the staff and the parents/guardians of the student and is used as the main vehicle for observing, recording, facilitating, and reporting the progress of the student in a holistic manner.

A Family-Like School Climate
The overall effect of having each student paired with an advocate, and the advocates working together with each other, is to purposefully create a family-like school climate. The school staff work together to make the school an inviting, accepting environment. Plans are to implement, as part of the model, the developmental model of Invitational Education, which intentionally examines every aspect of school operation to make it purposefully inviting. The relative small size of our schools, 20-60 students on the average, greatly enhances this close, family feel and allows everyone to know everyone else. The other aspect that is necessary to create a family-like environment is for every student to feel safe and accepted.

Summary of the Four Instructional Design Areas that are part of the NASS School Model:

Individualized Academic Development:

Academic Requirements for NASS Member Schools. The process for instructional design for the student is individualized through the Student Learning Plan, and the four instructional areas listed above are part of the NASS Street School Instructional Design Model. Although the following requirements are stated within the NASS Essentials for Street Schools, they are re-stated separately to reinforce their importance in NASS Schools.

Frequent, Varied, and Ongoing Assessment
An on-going plan of assessment is facilitated and monitored by the Advocate and provides for both incidental and regularly scheduled adjustment of the instructional strategies in the individual Student Learning Plan and, with composite information from all students yielded from the student management system, adjustments to the local instructional strategies in the local school design.

The NASS School Continuous Improvement Model
This newly designed tool will help NASS support its members in the areas that they determine are their greatest needs. For a graphic of the model, please see Appendix D.

Having recognized that every school is different because of the students and community, NASS wanted a model that would promote best practices among Street Schools, yet allow for individual schools to prioritize their continuous improvement plans, selecting the strategies, resources and training most appropriate for their school.

NASS Street School Essentials identify the conditions needed to create the optimal Street School learning environment and suggest strategies, resources, and training to achieve it. They are also designed to be used as a self-evaluation tool to identify the conditions that the school wishes to address in their annual School Continuous Improvement Plan (SSCIP).

Developed with the assistance of the NASS member who is the liaison for the school, the SCIP identifies the priorities for improvement for the upcoming year, defines the resources and training that NASS can provide, helps define how the impact of implementation can be measured in turn, providing solid statistics to supply to local supporters.

The School Continuous Improvement Plan format (Appendix E) has been designed as a web-based document which can be completed by the school leaders by transferring the essentials, strategies, resources, and training from the NASS Street Schools Essentials document into a plan format. It will then be linked to a specific action plan document (Appendix F), spelling out how, when, and who will implement the strategies. These documents, the SSCIP and the Street School Strategies Action Plans, will be the common focal point of NASS and the local school leader as they collaborate together in the continuous growth and improvement of their school.

This is how it would work:

We envision the NASS network of Schools as a continuously improving collaboration that will constantly be identifying and sharing new strategies, resources, and training to update the NASS Essentials, which will be offered at our National Conference and shared through the NASS website and regional or site visit training.

We plan for the Essentials to be the foundation piece for establishing accreditation for NASS Schools, and everyone moving toward that goal through this process. The ultimate goal, of course, is always serving our students better.

The National Association of Street Schools (NASS), headquartered in Denver, CO, is working nationwide to meet the needs of at-risk youth by developing a network of schools around the U.S. that provide personalized education, a moral code and tools for self-sufficiency. Our purpose is to facilitate the development of Street Schools nationwide through:

Toward the goal of reducing the drop-out rate and reclaiming young lives across the U.S., NASS provides the following services to member schools:

You can download this NASS Membership Guide and Application and
NASS Membership Application as only as a PDF

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