The Echo

"The transition into high school is a critical point in the educational pipeline, and ninth-grade can be characterized as one of its leakiest junctures." (Corinne Herlihy, Policy Brief: State and District-Level Support for Successful Transitions Into High School, National High School Center, betterhighschools.org)

The 9th Grade Bulge and The 10th Grade Dip

"Students’experiences in their first year of high school often determine their success throughout high school and beyond. However, more students fail ninth grade than any other grade.

"Students who are promoted to tenth grade, but who are off track—as indicated by failed grades, a lack of course credits or a lack of attendance during their ninth-grade gateway year—may have already missed the opportunity to get on a graduation track." (Elizabeth Williams and Scott Richman, AIR, The First Year of High School: a Quikc Stats Fact Sheet, National High School Center, betterhighschools.org)

Growing Bulge


"School enrollment numbers also highlight where what Johns Hopkins University researchers Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters call school "promoting power" is weakest. Grade enrollment numbers for the past 30 years show the transition between grades 8 and 10 is increasingly difficult for many students.

"Compared with enrollment numbers in 8th grade, 9th-grade enrollments are larger than ever. If students are progressing on time through the education pipeline, student enrollment in any particular grade should be about the same as enrollment in the previous grade. Such is the case in most of the grades. However, 9th-grade enrollment relative to 8th-grade enrollment belies this expectation. Enrollments are increasingly bunching up in grade 9. As of 2001, 13 percent more students were enrolled in grade 9 than in grade 8 the previous year nationwide, while the bulge can be much larger for some states. For example, in Florida, as many as 32 percent more students were enrolled in grade 9 than in grade 8 the previous year.

"The largest dip in enrollment from one year to the next is now between grades 9 and 10. As grade 9 enrollment has increased relative to grade 8, student progress from grade 9 to grade 10 has become more constricted. Nationally, as of 2001, while 10th-grade enrollment was between 11 and 12 percent smaller than 9th-grade enrollment the previous year, the difference was much higher in some states. For example, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas have grade 10 enrollments that are 20 percent smaller than the grade 9 enrollment the previous year. In contrast, prior to the mid-1980s, between 2 and 5 percent of 9th graders failed to progress to 10th grade, and the loss of students from the pipeline was most pronounced after grade 11.

"When we place the rise in grade 9 enrollment alongside the fall in grade 10 enrollment, the 9th-grade bulge becomes apparent. This bulge has grown most dramatically in the past two decades, first in the context of the standards movement that followed the publication of "A Nation at Risk" in 1983, then again as states introduced test-based school accountability programs and student graduation testing in the 1990s. In 2000, 9th-grade enrollment numbered 440,000 more than grade 8 enrollment and 520,000 more than grade 10 enrollment.

"Increasing attrition of students between grades 9 and 10 and higher enrollments of students in grade 9 relative to grade 8 reflects the fact that more students nationally are being flunked to repeat grade 9. This pattern bodes ill for future graduation rates as the 9th-grade bulge becomes an ever-narrowing bottleneck. As reported by researchers Lorrie Shepard and Mary Lee Smith in Flunking Grades: Research and Policies on Retention, repeating any grade undermines academic achievement and contributes to dropping out. More recent evidence from Texas and Philadelphia likewise shows that persistence to 12th grade is dramatically lower for students repeating grade 9." (Anne Wheelock, Jing Miao, The ninth-grade bottleneck: an enrollment bulge in a transition year that demands careful attention and action, School Administrator 2005)

Solutions?

1.  9th Grade Academies?

Around the country, restructuring 9th grades into small learning communities similar to interdisciplinary teacher teams that characterize many middle schools and downsizing high schools to 400 students or less are emerging as strategies for improving holding power. According to education researchers Jacqueline Ancess and Suzanna Ort Wichterle, more personalized learning in settings with high teacher-student ratios can help make school completion a reality for more students.

In the small schools they have studied, consistent teacher-student relationships and assignments designed to develop students' habits of mind are key to holding students to graduation. The explicit goal of making students "graduate-able" helps guard against such schools from becoming another guise for the district's low track. Still, districts should take care that such schools do not triage the easiest-to-teach students into small schools, leaving the neediest students in larger, less personal settings.


Likewise, school leaders should heed the note of caution sounded by Mary Anne Raywid and Gil Schmerler, researchers with considerable experience in alternative schools, who note that ongoing success of such schools requires district leadership to sustain support for such models, apply bureaucratic and union rules flexibly, define accountability standards broadly, and protect new alternatives from pressure to become like all other schools or evolve into a dead-end program. (Anne Wheelock, Jing Miao, The ninth-grade bottleneck: an enrollment bulge in a transition year that demands careful attention and action, School Administrator 2005)

2.  Support Services?

"Consider a range of support services to strengthen the transition from eighth to tenth grade.

Many students stuck in 9th grade already are overage for their grade, and when they fall behind, another grade retention is unlikely to help. Extra academic support offered early and often during the school year and before students fail, rather than after, can both improve course passing rates and strengthen student motivation to persist in school. In addition, students with learning difficulties who also struggle with attendance or behavioral problems need support that goes beyond academics to progress through 9th grade." (Wheelock and Miao)

3. Summer School?

"Districts can strengthen the transition between 8th and 9th grade by offering summer school to rising 9th graders, not as a remedial program but as a program to accelerate students' progress and help them begin to accumulate credits for graduation prior to 9th grade. In some cases where school feeder patterns are established, 8th-grade teachers may move into the high school to join a 9th-grade team to reduce 9th-grade anonymity." (Wheelock and Miao)

4. In-Class Supports?

During the 9th-grade year itself, schools may work to prevent course failure through in-class supports like making audiotapes available to students who can listen as they complete assigned readings. An extra period during the day where 9th graders receive re-teaching or double-time learning in specific subjects or afterschool homework centers staffed by teachers who monitor students and help them with incomplete assignments can improve course-passing rates. (Wheelock and Miao)

5. Engagement?

Some schools make direct instruction in study skills part of the 9th-grade curriculum or assign vulnerable 9th graders to 12th-grade buddies trained to tutor and counsel students in time management. Others work with community-based organizations to train struggling 9th graders to tutor younger students, thereby strengthening students' commitment to completing high school. Still others train volunteer adults from the community or recruit college students from teacher preparation programs to work as writing coaches in the school-based writing lab. (Wheelock and Miao)

6. Parental Connection?

While some students may fail 9th grade for academic reasons, others fail for lack of support in meeting attendance or disciplinary standards. To address these problems, school leaders can designate a parent involvement coordinator as the contact person to work with parents in each school, conduct orientation meetings about attendance and discipline for families before school starts, meet with new families arriving during the school year, and make home or workplace visits to families of chronically absent students. School leaders also can collaborate with community-based organizations to expand the resources available to monitor student attendance and behavior through personalized contracts with students, rewarding students for improvement.  (Wheelock and Miao)

7. Revise district and school policies and practices that may undermine school engagement?

No Child Left Behind legislation has generated considerable worry that pressure on districts and schools to look good on statistical measures contributes to fiddling with enrollments. However, many state- and district-based accountability policies that penalize or reward high schools for gains on 10th-grade tests already may be incentive enough to retain larger numbers of students in 9th grade to prop up test scores or to overuse certain discharge codes to enhance graduation rates. As we note, educators must begin to address problems by reporting data in transparent ways.

We suggest that education leaders consider alternatives to grade retention in every grade across each district to reduce the number of students who arrive in 9th grade already overage for their grade. Like retention in 9th grade, retention in kindergarten, elementary or middle school undermines both achievement and motivation and contributes to truancy and discipline problems.

Compared with retention, providing services when students need them in a school climate organized around the principle that "everyone has to get it" will produce more positive results. At the same time, accountability reporting of test scores, along with retention, attendance and graduation rates, should not trigger high-stakes rewards or penalties. Instead, a press for school improvement should come from school quality reviews that focus on assessing the quality of student work in the context of trends in other indicators.  (Wheelock and Miao)

You can keep reading Wheelock and Miao here:
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