Today’s blog is written with Sarah Morris, a Graduate Researcher in OEP and former junior high teacher.
This winter, as ninth-graders return to their previous courses or transition to new ones, we are thinking about how important their success is. Ninth-grade is a critical year for students, with implications for high school graduation and college-going, yet students often face many social and academic challenges during this time. These challenges may be related to the transition to a new school building where they are the youngest students and face new communities and expectations. We wondered if students who attended 9th grade outside of a traditional 9-12 high school model would have greater academic success than their peers attending.
To check this, we examined if students who attended 9th grade in a school where they were the oldest students enrolled experienced a reduced course failure rate than similar students who transitioned to a typical 9-12 high school for their freshman year. You can read the policy brief here, but we’ll hit the highlights.
Our prior research showed that over 1 in 5 of Arkansas’s ninth-grade students fail a course during the year. Failure rates are higher among ninth-grade students who are economically disadvantaged, with about 29% failing at least one course. For Arkansas students, failing a course in 9th grade is associated with a 27 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of enrolling in college.
About 51% of Arkansas’s ninth-graders attend schools serving grades 9 through 12, the traditional high school configuration. About 29% of Arkansas’s ninth-graders attend schools that terminate at 9th grade: buildings enrolling 7th-9th grade, 8th-9th grade, or 9th grade only. These students experience their influential ninth-grade year separate from older students. The remaining 20% of Arkansas’s ninth-graders attend a school that starts before ninth-grade and ends at 12th grade, the most common model being 7th-12th grade buildings. We don’t address these here, but you can read about them in the policy brief.
We examined differences in 9th grade failure rates in buildings that terminate at ninth grade compared to traditional high school buildings serving grades 9-12. Here’s what we found:
- 15% of ninth-grade students attending buildings that terminate at 9th grade fail a course, while 25% of those attending traditional 9th -12th grade high schools
- 21% of ninth-graders who are economically disadvantaged and attending buildings that terminate at 9th grade fail a course, while 33% of their similarly lower-income peers fail in traditional 9th -12th grade high schools.
All students and students participating in FRL program, 2017-18 and 2018-19 pooled sample.
These percentages reflect the ninth-grade course failure rates occurring in those building configurations, but they don’t take into account students’ characteristics or prior academic achievement. The schools may be serving a greater percentage of students at risk academically. We know students’ characteristics and prior academic achievement are related to ninth-grade success, so we control for these differences when we run the statistical likelihood of course failure for different building configurations.
After controlling for student’s characteristics and prior academic achievement, we find:
- Students attending buildings terminating at ninth-grade are 9.2 percentage points less likely to fail a course in ninth-grade compared to students attending traditional high school buildings serving grades 9 through 12.
- Students who are economically disadvantaged attending buildings terminating at ninth-grade are 4 percentage points less likely to fail a course in ninth-grade compared economically disadvantaged attending traditional high school buildings serving grades 9 through 12.
Given that after accounting for student differences there is still statistically significantly lower likelihood a student will fail a course if attending a school that terminates at ninth-grade, we could jump to the conclusion that all ninth-graders should not attend typical 9-12 high schools. We don’t think just changing school building configuration would make a difference.
Though we can’t be sure why there are differences between building configurations, we suggest that the better outcomes in buildings that terminate in ninth-grade could be mainly due to a focus among faculty and administration on the importance of student success in the ninth-grade year. Those buildings might have a community focused on what is developmentally appropriate for ninth-grade student success, and may keep a close eye on student progress. Administration and teachers might be more aware of and focused on the educational impacts of success in the grade 9 year, and may be implementing teaching or grading practices that better support student success.
As the OEP team continues to dig further into grading equity practices across the state, we encourage district leaders to examine ninth-grade failure rates in their schools. District leaders should focus on interventions and academic and social supports for ninth-graders to help promote their success as ninth grade is an important year for future educational outcomes.