Monitor freshman-year grades and intervene early, treating D students as needing attention comparable to F students¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 6 claims (6 for) · 4 studies (3 associational, 1 design), q1–q3 · 1 of 4 report an effect size · 6 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article supports district and school use of ninth-grade GPA as an early warning indicator, beyond the binary Freshman OnTrack measure, to identify students who will benefit from assistance. Districts are "increasingly turning to 'early warning indicators' like Freshman OnTrack as a way of identifying students who will benefit from assistance," and broadening the focus to overall GPA could extend benefits to college outcomes. Because graduation rates differ sharply between F and D students, the article concludes D students need attention too.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Access to timely freshman-grade data at the school or district level, as CPS achieved with its rapid reporting system alerting schools to attendance problems and low grades in the first quarter

Constraints¶

• The evidence is correlational; the article states there are no studies showing a causal relationship between being on-track and graduating
• The article examined only one-year college retention, not college graduation

Target Learners¶

• First-time ninth-grade high school students

Target Learning Goals¶

• High school graduation
• College enrollment and persistence

Claims¶

• Ninth grade GPAs are the single most predictive indicator of high school graduation, college enrollment, and degree completion for all English Learner groups [+W]
• Freshman GPA is highly stable, correlating 0.87 with eleventh-grade GPA [+W]
• Ninth-grade GPA strongly predicts on-time high school graduation, with an especially large gap between F and D students [+W]
• Ninth-grade GPA predicts college enrollment and one-year college persistence in linear, incremental patterns [+W]
• Ninth-grade on-track status (at least five credits and no more than one semester F) makes students almost four times more likely to graduate [+W]
• Students off track for graduation after ninth grade are less than half as likely to graduate than their on-track peers [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Provide schools real-time early warning data reports and credit recovery reports to monitor student performance and support on-track progress
• Focus school improvement efforts on the ninth-grade transition using real-time data to monitor and support at-risk freshmen
• Integrate attendance and GPA on-track indicators with qualitative data into elementary systems of student support

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Easton, J.Q., Johnson, E., & Sartain, L. (2017). The predictive power of ninth-grade GPA. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. https://consortium.uchicago.edu/publications/predictive-power-ninth-grade-gpa