Early Warning Indicators of Dropouts

Each school year, roughly a thousand students drop out of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). However, unlike other large, urban school districts where students who drop out skip school and are suspended often (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2010), students who drop out of MCPS are present in school; they just are not doing well academically.

According to the end-of-year MCPS attendance files provided to the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) each year, students who drop out of MCPS are generally coded as dropping out of school due to: 1) a lack of personal motivation or interest to continue their education, or to 2) a lack of academic success including low grades and/or retention. These are both signs of a lack of student engagement (i.e., investment and motivation towards school).

Fortunately, students who drop out of school exhibit a pattern of behaviors that are generally identifiable in advance of them dropping out of school completely. These behaviors are referred to as Early Warning Indicators (EWIs)

EWIs use student-level data including attendance, behavior, and course failures (the ABCs) to identify cut-points that are related to an increased likelihood of students dropping out from school. With longitudinal data systems, these patterns have generally been identified by grade 6 (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2010) but can be identified as early as third grade (Rethinam & West 2012).

By applying the EWIs approach to MCPS student data, this report identifies the attendance, behavior, and coursework indicators of MCPS dropouts for the first marking periods of Grades 3, 6, and 9. Additionally, for the first time in EWI research, this report identifies EWIs for Grade 1.

Key Early Warning Findings:

Grade 1 Marking Period 3

• Students absent from school nine or more times are twice as likely to drop out of high school
• Students suspended (in- or out-of-school) one or more times can be up to five times as likely to drop out of high school
• Students below grade level in reading and/or mathematics are twice as likely to drop out of high school;
• Students having a calculated third marking period grade point average (GPA) below a 1.20 are twice times as likely to drop out of high school

Grade 3 Marking Period 1

• Students absent from school three or more times are twice as likely to drop out of high school
• Students suspended (in- or out-of-school) one or more times can be up to nine times as likely to drop out of high school;
• Students receiving a ‘Needs Improvement’ on completing homework on-time are twice as likely to drop out of high school
• Students below grade level in reading and/or mathematics are twice as likely to drop out of high school;
• Students having a calculated first marking period grade point average (GPA) below a 3.00 are twice as likely to drop out of high school