Stephen Wakefield 
BALTIMORE, Md. — July 7, 2026 — Concentric Educational Solutions today announced a new certificate program for its Professional Student Advocates developed at Howard University in collaboration with The Human Potential L.A.B., a research nonprofit focused on applying the science of human development to real-world settings. Professional Student Advocates conduct Concentric’s home visits, and the new program trains them to approach every home visit with deep empathy and ethnographic rigor, empowering them to look past attendance data and compliance checklists, find the real reasons a student is missing school, and help families work through what stands in the way of learning.
Standard training teaches employees what to do. This program teaches Concentric’s advocates how to think: how to read a data point without rushing to judgment, how to get a family talking honestly about what’s really going on, and how to turn what they learn at the kitchen table into something a superintendent can actually act on.
“The role of a Professional Student Advocate goes far beyond procedure, and our training has to reflect that,” said Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, Chief of Research at Concentric Educational Solutions and a professor at Howard University. “This certificate improves our advocates’ ability to walk into a family’s home, understand what’s actually keeping that child from school, and help change the path they’re on.”
The curriculum is designed and led by Dr. Toldson, recently named one of the top 200 university-based scholars in the country shaping educational practice and policy. His latest book, Possibility and Statistics: How to Use Data to Illuminate Pathways to Success (Emerald Press, June 2026), provides the thinking behind the program, including two concepts that anchor the training: Bad Stats, the idea that raw attendance numbers often hide more than they reveal, and the Context Coefficient, a framework for weighing the real-world circumstances behind that data before drawing conclusions about a student.
Advocates work through real scenarios and decision points rather than sitting through lecture-style modules, and their progress is tracked automatically through Concentric’s digital credentialing system.
Once in the field, advocates rely on Concentric’s home visit app to do the job well. The app supports structured documentation, automated notetaking, and secure resource tracking, while keeping the advocate’s own judgment, not the software, at the center of every visit. The goal is straightforward: advocates spend more time with families and less time on paperwork, and school leaders end up with insights they can actually trust and act on.
“Every home visit our advocates conduct is also a data point,” said Dr. Toldson. “When we see the same pattern surface again and again, that’s not an anecdote. That’s a finding. We build it back into future iterations of our training so the next advocate walks in already knowing what to look for.”
The program’s capstone will be held at Howard University, where advocates present their fieldwork to a panel of Concentric leaders and Howard University faculty. This presentation is part of the certification requirements, ensuring every credentialed advocate has defended their work in an academic setting before earning the credential.
Additional information about Concentric Educational Solutions’ new certificate program for its Professional Student Advocates is available here. To learn more about Concentric Educational Solutions’ approach to combating chronic absenteeism, visit the company’s website, follow the organization on X, or connect on LinkedIn.
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