Early Pilot Studies for Mazin EnCompass™ Show Promising Results

COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Early results from pilot studies of Mazin EnCompass™, a software program designed to help districts connect at-risk students to services, show a marked increase in identification, referral and program completion rates. Schools using the program have been able to increase the number of students served, decrease the amount of time needed to get students into appropriate services, and better monitor the efficacy of programs for substance abuse, bullying, mental health and suicide prevention, violence prevention and academic intervention.

Mazin EnCompass™, published by Mazin Education, is an early identification, referral and monitoring system designed to help schools ensure that at-risk students are receiving and benefiting from the academic, mental health or other services they need to be successful, safe and healthy at school. It helps streamline and enhance existing initiatives such as PBIS (Positive Behavioral Systems of Support), RTI (Response to Intervention), MTSS (Multi-Tiered Systems of Support), Student Assistance Teams and anti-bullying initiatives.

Mazin EnCompass™ was developed by educational psychologist Dr. Mariam Azin and researchers at PRES Associates as part of the Safe School/Healthy Students grant program. "What we realized early on is that often the problem is not the programs that are in place. The problem is that students are not connecting to the programs," says Dr. Azin. "It doesn't matter whether we're talking about mental health services, dropout prevention, or reading intervention. Students cannot benefit from services they are not receiving." Mazin EnCompass™ was developed in order to "close the cracks in the pipeline" and ensure that at-risk students are matched with the right services to improve academic, social and mental health outcomes. Dr. Azin launched her new company, Mazin Education, in 2012 to provide a platform for large-scale implementation of Mazin EnCompass for districts, states and educational service centers who want to improve services for at-risk students. 

The software program includes sophisticated algorithms to automatically flag students who are demonstrating warning signs of dropping out. "We know what the warning signs are," says Dr. Azin. "If we can connect the dots between attendance patterns, grade patterns, behavior and other risk factors, we can predict, sometimes years in advance, the probability that students will drop out. Mazin EnCompass automates this for districts." Dr. Azin also stresses the importance of early identification and referral to reduce the risk of school violence, suicide and other crises. "It's all about knowing the warning signs. If we can streamline and automate the reporting and referral process, we can get these kids into services before we have a tragedy."

Mazin Education has just published a report detailing the pilot study results. For a copy of Making it Work: How Mazin EnCompass Increases the Effectiveness of Student Assistance Teams and Support Services, visit www.mazineducation.com/research.    

About Mazin Education

Founded by Dr. Mariam Azin in 2012, Mazin Education (www.mazineducation.com) is a privately held, woman-owned business with offices in Ohio and Wyoming. Dr. Azin founded Mazin Education based on twenty years of experience in educational research and evaluation and her experiences as the founder and president of Planning, Research & Evaluation (PRES) Associates, Inc. Mazin Education draws together all of the resources of PRES Associates along with new talent and expertise in technology development and operations. The new company was established to put in place the infrastructure to support large-scale deployment of the educational software solutions developed by PRES Associates. Mazin Education brings together the best of both worlds: assessment and tracking solutions built on a solid foundation of psychometric research and data collection experience, and the operational expertise to support large-scale state initiatives.

SOURCE Mazin Education