Abstract:
Freshmen year is a pivotal period in students’ academic career. This period of transition from the middle grades into high school is marked by a number of unique academic and developmental challenges that influence students’ prospects for graduation and preparation for post-secondary education and careers. Research from Chicago, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia has shown that, regardless of their performance in elementary and middle school, students who fail courses and build absentees in the 9th grade are nearly half as likely to graduate from high school on time compared to their counterparts who stay on track. Researcher consortia in each of these urban school districts are working with policy makers and practitioners to identify students who fall “off track” in the 9th grade and to develop strategies aimed at preventing dropout. This symposium will bring together researcher consortia members of these urban school districts, to reflect on recent research that addresses problems associated with the transition into and through high school.
Session Summary
The transition from middle school to high school is a pivotal time in student’s academic career. This period is marked by a number of unique academic and developmental challenges that influence students’ prospects for graduation and preparation for post-secondary education and careers. Research from Chicago, New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia has shown that, regardless of their performance in elementary and middle school, students who fail courses and build absentees in the 9th grade are nearly half as likely to graduate from high school on time compared to their counterparts who stay on track. The challenge for high schools therefore is to find practical and reliable ways to keep students on-track during 9th grade. Intervention based on early warning signs that identify students who are at risks is one way to address this problem. Several organizations have been working with schools districts to identify these warning signs and develop interventions that target students at risk for not graduating high school.
The Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) has built a 20-year partnership with the Chicago Public Schools to inform policy and practice with rigorous evidence about the challenges of ensuring that all students have access to a high quality education and about the effectiveness of efforts to address those challenges. A cornerstone of CCSR’s work has been the development of indicators that predict students’ prospects for graduation from high school and of monitoring tools aimed at helping high school intervene with students who are struggling with the transition into high school. Following the lead of CCSR, several new research consortia, including the Research Alliance for New York City Schools, the Baltimore Education Research Consortium, and Research for Action in Philadelphia have also been studying the challenges associates with students’ transition from the middle grade into and through high school.
This symposium will bring together papers, from each of the four cities that reflect the continuum of work being done to address these issues. It includes analyses that identify early warning signs of students at risk at not graduating and examines the extent to which these measures serve as leading indicators both of the need for intensive intervention and whether schools are effectively addressing the needs of their entering students. It will also include a documentation of the ways indicators (early warning signs) are being used to improve student’s graduation chances. Also to be presented will be an evaluation of a freshmen-year intervention in one district.
Through the presentation of these papers and a subsequent discussion session, the symposium will provide a forum for exchange of knowledge gained by each consortium. Although these cities are facing a similar problem, each consortium has been independently formulating solutions. The collaboration facilitated by this symposium will allow for the sharing of successful approaches and a collective learning from initiatives that have not been successful.
The structure for the proposed 90 minute symposium is as follows: A chairperson will provide brief background remarks on the high school dropout problem and its significance, the varying approaches to addressing this issue and the potential benefit of cross district collaboration in attacking the issue (5 minutes). Invited authors from each of the four urban districts will present on their work (12 minutes each). Two discussants from New York and Chicago, will then spend 10 minutes each, providing overarching remarks about how the findings from these studies have been, or could be employed in their districts. The remaining time will be used for a follow-up discussion on the presentations. This will include general Q&A.