The National High School Center has released a set of four new resources on how to support and guide a smooth transition for students into high school — three of them written by MDRC researchers. 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. MDRC’s research in four urban districts suggests that as many as 40 percent of students fail to get promoted from ninth- to tenth-grade on time, and fewer than 20 percent of those students recover from failure and go on to graduate.

A policy brief, "State and District-Level Support for Successful Transitions into High School," by MDRC Research Associate Corinne Herlihy, examines what some states and districts are doing to address the issue. A companion best practices piece, "Toward Ensuring a Smooth Transition Into High School," also by Herlihy, is based on MDRC’s evaluations of two reform models, Talent Development and Project Transition. In "Managing the Transition to Ninth Grade in a Comprehensive Urban High School," MDRC consultant Thomas J. Smith offers a snapshot of how one school is managing to make a positive difference for ninth-graders through a Ninth Grade Success Academy, a component of the Talent Development model. Finally, the National High School Center has developed a fact sheet on the ninth-grade bulge, which provides recent statistics documenting the high number of students who are held back in the ninth grade.

Read the National High School Center’s press release for more information about this toolkit of resources. For more information about MDRC’s research on high schools, visit the secondary school reforms page.