The other point of connection between the two stories is the primacy of data, which was a theme I observed repeatedly in my research, and one that surprised me. I knew data would be important for generating insights and measuring progress, but I didn’t anticipate that it would be the centerpiece of many upstream efforts. I mean this even in a literal sense—what the teachers and counselors in Chicago were doing, and what the high-risk team members in Newburyport were doing, was sitting around a table together and looking at data. Discussing how the fresh data in front of them would inform the
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