In 2007, CPS launched a major
effort, centered on keeping more ninth-graders on track to graduation. Freshmen
are considered on track if they have enough credits to be promoted to tenth
grade and have earned no more than one semester F in a core course. The effort
was a response to research from UChicago CCSR showing that students who end
their ninth-grade year on track are almost four times more likely to graduate
from high school than those who are off track.
The district initiative promoted
the use of data to monitor students’ level of dropout risk throughout the
ninth-grade year, allowing teachers to intervene before students fell too far
behind. The diversity of strategies was notable—from calls home when students
missed a class to algebra tutoring to homework help. The goal was to match the
intervention to the specific needs of the student and prevent the dramatic
decline in grades and attendance that most CPS students experience when they
transition to high school. Since that time, the CPS on-track rate has
risen 25 percentage points, from 57 to 82 percent.
Preventable Failure:
Improvements in Long-Term Outcomes when High Schools Focused on the Ninth Grade
Year, shows that improvements in ninth grade on-track rates were
sustained in tenth and eleventh grade and followed by a large increase in
graduation rates. This analysis was done on 20 "early mover schools"
that showed large gains in on-track rates as early as the 2007-08 and 2008-09
school years, allowing for enough time to have elapsed to analyze how the
increase in on-track rates affected graduation rates
Other key findings:
·
Between 2007-08 and 2012-13, system-wide improvements in
ninth-grade on-track rates were dramatic, sustained, and observed across a wide
range of high schools and among critical subgroups—by race, by gender, and
across achievement levels. Although all students appeared to gain, the
benefits of getting on track were greatest for students with the lowest
incoming skills. Students with eighth-grade Explore scores less than 12—the
bottom quartile of CPS students—had a 24.5 percentage point increase in their
on-track rates. On-track rates improved more among African American males
than among any other racial/ethnic gender subgroup, rising from 43 percent in
2005 to 71 percent in 2013.
·
Improvements in on-track were accompanied by across-the-board
improvements in grades. Grades improved at all ends of the achievement
spectrum, with large increases both in the percentage of students getting Bs and the percentage
of students receiving no Fs. Thus, evidence suggests that on-track improvement
was driven by real improvement in achievement, not just a result of teachers
giving students grades of "D" instead of "F."
- Increasing ninth-grade on-track rates did not negatively affect high
schools’ average ACT scores—despite the fact that many more students with
weaker incoming skills made it to junior year to take the test. ACT scores
remained very close to what they were before on-track rates improved, which
means that the average growth from Explore to ACT remained the same or
increased, even though more students—including many students with weaker
incoming skills—were taking the ACT.
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