Still freshmen: Study looks at ninth grade repeaters
A new report from Johns Hopkins found that more than 90,000 students from six states repeated ninth grade in 2004-05, with nearly three in 10 students repeating ninth-grade in one of them.
I thought it was interesting so I am putting the info up here for your perusal. I have not seen much research on kids held back in their freshman year.
I wonder if the high school and middle school graduation coaches are impacting this rate in Georgia?
According to the release on the report:
“Still a Freshman: Examining the Prevalence and Characteristics of Ninth-Grade Retention Across Six States,” introduces a new measure, the first-time ninth-grade estimate, to study ninth-grade retention rates that can help teachers and administrators identify and help students while there is time to keep them on the graduation path.
The report also looks at students who are repeating ninth grade by school size, location, percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, race/ethnicity, and pupil/teacher ratio.
The states are Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Because states do not distinguish between repeat and first-time ninth-graders when they report fall enrollments, the estimate uses adjusted counts of first-time ninth-graders who are used by the states to calculate graduation rates, explained the report’s author Thomas C. West, a senior research analyst at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The estimate is calculated by dividing the adjusted number of first-time ninth-graders from the graduation rate by the total number of ninth-grade students reported for the same school year. The study focuses on the class of 2008, whose members were ninth-graders in 2004-05.
The six states were chosen because they use the same method to calculate graduation rates for the Class of 2008 and because they represent not only the areas producing the most dropouts, but also those with average dropout rates, showing that the new measure is reliable in different conditions.
Ninth grade is found to be a critical year because students who are not successful often drop out. Most schools and districts depend on graduation rates to measure student success, but they are reported too late to get help to students who need it.
Other findings include:
- In South Carolina more than 40 percent of high schools had ninth-grade retention rates above 30 percent. In Massachusetts, New York, Indiana and Virginia, 5 to 8 percent of the schools had retention rates above 30 percent.
- Nearly three in 10 students repeated ninth grade in South Carolina; two in 10 in North Carolina and slightly more than 10 percent in New York, Indiana and Virginia.
- One in 10 students repeated ninth grade in Massachusetts.
- In Massachusetts, New York, Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina, more than one-third of the students attended schools with first-time ninth-grade estimates below the state average. In South Carolina, more than two-third s of the students attended schools with estimates below the state average.
- As concentrations of poor and minority students increase in a school, the percentage of students repeating ninth grade also rises.
The value of this new measure is in identifying struggling students early enough to get them help, said West. If states and districts were asked to report the enrollments for both first-time ninth-graders and repeating ninth-graders as of Oct. 1 of each school year, then administrators would know if they had a population of students who need assistance long before those students became part of the graduation — or dropout — rate, he recommended.
The Everyone Graduates Center seeks to identify the barriers that keep students from graduating high school prepared for adult success; to develop ways to overcome these barriers, and to build local capacity to implement and sustain them. It is located at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins.
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67 comments Add your comment
teacher/parent
October 28th, 2009
4:33 pm
I say we clone sportsmommy. Chuck is right, what she is describing is not hovering; it’s good parenting. Eventually, I’m sure she will stop reminding her son everyday about assigments, etc. and allow him to succeed or fail (probably succeed due to her) on his own.
High School Teacher is correct. We need real solutions for students who are too old to stay in middle school but not academically ready for high school. Otherwise, we are setting the students up for failure. Either let’s get the students caught up (not possible in a high school of 2000+ in classes of 25+) or stop holding high schools accountable for graduation rates. That will only lead to giving dimpomas away to students who haven’t earned them , thereby turning them into useless pieces of paper.
food for thought
October 28th, 2009
6:11 pm
High School Teacher hit the nail on the head. As an 8th grade teacher (who now has one in college and one recently graduated from college), I know we send on students who will not be prepared for the rigors of HS, let alone college. I also know that I was given in August students not prepared for the rigors of 8th…and so it goes, down to the Kindergarten teacher who has a classroom with both kids who can read as well as kids who may not know English or their letters.
We need to stop pretending that formal education and the learning process are one-size-fits-all. Some kids need only 5 months to master what others need 15 months to do. All is largely based on the quality of the teachers, quality of parenting, and the child’s natural intelligence.
When we pass on kids who have not been successful, that gives them the illusion – DELUSION – that their motivation, attention, and work habits are ok, when they are often substandard. Then they hit that 9th grade wall, and all bets are off! Some of our so-called solutions (RTI, differentiation) are like trying to stop a flood with a sponge. We need hard-core remediation – I don’t necessarily mean retention – making a kid sit through the same material twice is no way to get them motivated to learn. We need “in-between” grades – a grade 8 1/2, so to speak. Suppose at all these “gateway” years, we had somewhere to send the kids who didn’t pass the CRCT – a class where they could get the help they needed. Wouldn’t that be better than waiting until they dropout to ask what went wrong?
Spudz
October 28th, 2009
6:11 pm
@ Gwinnett HS Teacher – Please read my earlier post again. I never mentioned that you nor your colleagues were in this for all the big money. Please don’t take my previous post personal if it does not apply to you. I know teachers do not get paid what they are worth and for the record, you all would be millionaires if it were up to me. My hat goes off to you for what you deal with on a daily basis. But again, there are some teachers that do not care about these kids. If you think otherwise, please read some of the previous posts.
My purpose of posting was to discuss this serious issue and find possible solutions.
Spudz
October 28th, 2009
6:21 pm
@ L Boogie, High School Teacher, Chuck, Dekalb Conservative, Teacher/Parent, and sportsmommy74 – Thanks for your input. I received a lot if information from your posts as well as others. But yours stood out the most.
ScienceTeacher671
October 28th, 2009
6:46 pm
high school teacher and SallyB have pretty much said what I wanted to say – too many students being socially promoted without the skills to succeed in high school.
Parents need to know…if their child did not pass the 8th grade CRCT, that child more than likely does not have the skills to do high school level work, and most likely will NOT be successful in high school, no matter what the committee says. Same goes if the child scored in the 800-820 range – that’s still below grade level.
catlady
October 28th, 2009
7:20 pm
We have fifth graders who have never passed the CRCt, yet HERE THEY ARE. The only way a kid is retained at my school is if the parents demand it. The THREE who were retained out of 630 all had parents who demanded it. They were all ESOL parents who seem to think their child should be at grade level-imagine that! We have fifth graders who don’t know automatically that 8+5=13.
I work with a fourth grade reading class where (thanks to REading First, a discredited NCLB, FOB program) we measure student learning by how fast kids read words (DIBELS). This is not the bottom class. The kids in this room read at 50wpm, which is an end of 1st grade rate. One dear child told everyone he had “moved up” to the “top” group within the room. He is at the bottom of the next to bottom subgroup. Many of the children have a very out of touch view of their skills, as do their parents. I mean, they must be doing fine–they were passed on!
We need to have expectations and enforce them, instead of sending kids on and on and on until they hit the brick wall of 9th grade. In our state, we will probably find a way to bypass the “requirement” of passing the classes. With the “no zero” policy, we are on the way.
V for Vendetta
October 28th, 2009
8:59 pm
Am I the only one here who love SallyB? Preach!
V for Vendetta
October 28th, 2009
9:00 pm
love(s)
zoe
October 28th, 2009
10:20 pm
I can only agree with much of what was already said. I have a 9th grade repeater homeroom this year. Everyday I would tell them they needed to pass their classes to move up, actually go to class and do their work. Many of these kids wander the halls on a daily basis and of course their teachers don’t write them up because that would mean the kids would actually go to class! Just spending 15 minutes with them in the morning was enough for me, I could see how their presence in a classroom would disrupt the learning of the other 27 other souls unlucky enough to have a class with one of them. There are a couple that are sweet and are receiving services, they are the ones I worry about. They are forced on a diploma track they will never be able to complete successfully. Most of the others are using bad behavior to cover up the fact they need a lot more help and because they are so poorly behaved, they spend much of their time in out of school or in school suspension making it almost impossible to ever pass a class. I have one student that has missed at least 35 days this semester already!
ScienceTeacher671
October 28th, 2009
10:36 pm
Does the state fund remedial classes if needed, or is it assumed that if we are all doing our jobs, no remediation will ever be needed?
Joy in Teaching
October 28th, 2009
10:55 pm
When I taught high school, I was convinced that the problem was that those middle school teachers just passed them along to get rid of them. Now that I teach middle school, I am convinced that those elementary school teachers are just passing kids along so that they don’t hurt their self esteem.
We stay that we have standards, but we aren’t allowed to actually apply those standards by the powers that be, by parents, or by those who monitor schools for NCLB. So the standards get lower and lower just to appease those..and our students get farther behind.
EducationCEO
October 29th, 2009
11:51 am
High School Teacher you nailed it! Spudz..welcome to my world. My child is now being home school and taling some classed through the GA Virtual School…it’s just a bunch of busy work…that’s why kids can’t pass. They arent learning anything because they have too many darn worksheets to complete! My child had better consider himself lucky that I have sense enough to know that a complete paragraph has 5-7 sentences, not 3-5!
Sarge
October 30th, 2009
1:28 am
The kid dropped French…somehow, Dad found out, went to school, and personaly escorted the kid from study hall back to the French classroom.
The kid found Algebra too taxing…somehow, Dad found out, went to school, and personaly escorted the kid from the general math class back to the Algebra class.
Following both events, that evening, some “attitudinal adjustments” were initiated, by none other than Dad; at some point in time, the kid realized that it just ain’t worth the hastle of taking the easy way out. Later, at some as yet unidentified point in time, the kid also realized that the easy way leads to nowhere. All of this, of course, was made possible because Dad (in no pretty terms) “built a fire under the kid’s six”.
Let’s fast-forward a coupla generations:
It seems that neither parents, teachers, nor any adults in kids’ lives can look at them crosseyed without fear/concern of legal retribution. Kids, therefore, are pretty much left to their own (often flawed) decisions as to their own destinys. It’s no wonder these kids flunk out of the beginning of what should be the best years in their lives…years when they can explore life, learn about life and, in the end, enjoy life. Instead, they are relegated to scratching at life and reaching for the crumbs.
Adults in kids’ lives should be able to exercise more than a modicum of control in these young lives…give them rudders, targets and motivation, and they’ll shun the easy way.
Sarge
November 11th, 2009
12:46 am
At one time, the repeater was the big kid whos motivation was to be the big man on the football team.
Ole Guy
November 30th, 2009
1:41 am
Dan, I’ll bet some of your teachers had disruptive students swap licks while classmates observed.
Our Poor Children
December 1st, 2009
10:40 pm
This guy or person Chuck is saying what I have been telling people for years. Where do you people think the sates test come from? Companies that sale this junk (all these test) to the public and our law makers are getting their pockets lined with tax Dollars. If you do some research, you will find that American students take more useless classes in school than any other Country. Why is the government promising no child left behind when now, more and more children is being left behind? No two people have the same learning abilities and that is why schools should get rid of football teams and other sports and teach wood shop, automotive repair, and other such classes. If our government and the school administrators concentrates on doing what’s best for our children, then the ones that are not ready for college can at least get into the military to protect America.
We need to get rid of all of these useless tests of the Bush administration and concentrate on getting our children ready for the real world. How can I say all this? Here’s how: I was born with severe dyslexia but my all Black High School worked with me to graduate. After High School I got a good job because of my mechanical skills. Later I joined the military where I became a leader because of my old High School. After the military, I went to work for the Department of Defense and worked my way into management. Today I am retired making more than $75,000.00 per year after taxes. I am living proof that the people at the top are hurting our children today.
Finally: Visit Japan and see how easy their schools are compared to ours. Those children don’t take half the crap our children do. So keep that in mind when you think are children are at fault for having problems in American Schools.
Remember that I have dyslexia and I no longer have a secretary to proof read my writing.
A skylit Drive
December 9th, 2009
12:02 pm
Well, i hope ya’ll kno because i am stupid and irresponsible i have failed the 9th grade….my laziness and my way of decieving people has earned me the spot to take this grade again.
Isn’t that Awesome!!!!! not!
no it isn’t i wish i could have went back, i wish i could have made something of my self but, its to late i’m already here…in the 9th grade…talk’n to a bunch of people.
you ask why is this weirdo even saying anything? whats her deal eh??
well, i just can’t find away to make things right, i wish that i could be in my Original Grade.
that would be nice .
-Thank You-