Ninth-Grade Attendance Rates Predict High School Graduation

What are the best predictors of whether a ninth-grader will graduate from high school on time? Attendance and grade point average, according to a new report, What Matters for Staying On-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public High Schools: A Close Look at Course Grades, Failures, and Attendance in the Freshman Year, by Elaine M. Allensworth and John Q. Easton of the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. As the figure below shows, nearly 90 percent of freshmen in Chicago public schools who missed less than a week of school per semester graduated within four years. Missing five to nine days a semester was enough to drop the graduation rate to 63 percent. Allensworth and Easton argue that ninth grade is a make-or-break year and that there is much that educators can do to help students navigate the transition into high school.

Urban school districts around the country are focusing special attention on the critical transition year of ninth grade. At MDRC’s recent high school reform conference, “Putting Knowledge to Work: A Summit of Midsized School Districts,” Allensworth previewed her report findings for leadership teams from 22 school districts. These practitioners then discussed what their districts were doing to ease students’ transition into high school and help them stay on track through graduation — and how their experiences fit with the expanding research base about high school reform efforts. This conference was the third in a series that was co-convened by the National High School Alliance and the Council of the Great City Schools and supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation.

MDRC continues to study some of the most prominent high school reform models, most of which include special interventions in the ninth grade. For instance, the Talent Development model’s Ninth-Grade Success Academy, which combines small learning communities with “double-dosing” of math and English instruction, among other components, has shown particularly promising results. Insights from MDRC’s evaluations can be found in Meeting Five Critical Challenges of High School Reform: Lessons from Research on Three Reform Models. In addition, user-friendly and research-based products for practitioners are available from the National High School Center, in which MDRC is a partner organization.

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