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On-Off Track Indicators
for High School Graduation and College Success
To increase the percentage of students who graduate, educators need to know the “warning signs” that will alert them to students who are falling off the pathway to graduation. Interventions can be tailored to address the particular problem that is keeping students from staying on-track.
The idea behind early indicators analytics work is simple but powerful. Years before dropouts actually leave high school, most of them send strong “signals” that they are having some sort of trouble in school. Further, these signals are observable in standard types of data that school districts keep on their students. Evidence from a study in one large school district suggests that almost half of the eventual dropouts sent “warning signals” as early as sixth grade.
Researchers from the Everyone Graduates Center work with school districts and states to identify the “warning signs” that students send when they are on the pathway to dropping out of high school. In pilot projects supported by the Center, educators have been using real-time data to intervene with students who exhibit one or more early indicators of dropout.
Unfulfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphia’s Dropout Crisis, 2000-2005
Using longitudinal data for a cohort of Philadelphia students, researchers from the Center identified a number of eighth and ninth grade “early warning signals” of high school dropout. Eighth graders who had 1) failed English, or 2) failed mathematics, or 3) attended school less than 80 percent of the time had at least a 75% chance of dropping out of school. Among ninth graders, several factors were predictors of dropping out: 1) earning fewer than two credits; 2) not being promoted to tenth grade; and 3) attending school less than 70 percent of the time. Eighty-four percent of the eventual dropouts had at least one of the “early warning signals” in the eighth or ninth grade.
Unfulfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphia's Dropout Crisis, 2000-2005. Ruth Curran Neild and Robert Balfanz. Philadelphia Youth
Transitions Collaborative and Project U-Turn. www.projectUturn.net
Preventing Student Disengagement
This article considers the practical, conceptual, and empirical foundations of an early identification
and intervention system for middle-grades schools to combat student disengagement and
increase graduation rates in our nation’s cities. Many students in urban schools become disengaged
at the start of the middle grades, which greatly reduces the odds that they will eventually
graduate.
We use longitudinal analyses—following almost 13,000 students from 1996 until
2004—to demonstrate how four predictive indicators reflecting poor attendance, misbehavior,
and course failures in sixth grade can be used to identify 60% of the students who will not graduate
from high school. Fortunately, by combining effective whole-school reforms with attendance,
behavioral, and extra-help interventions, graduation rates can be substantially increased.
Preventing Student Disengagement and
Keeping Students on the Graduation Path in
Urban Middle-Grades Schools: Early
Identification and Effective Interventions
Robert Balfanz, Lisa Herzog, Douglas J. Mac Iver. EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 42(4), 223–235
Copyright 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Kentucky Indicators Project
Are there “early indicators” that a student will graduate from a postsecondary institution once he or she has enrolled? Likewise, are there “signals” that a student is on the pathway to dropping out of college?
In collaboration with Jobs for the Future, EGC is developing predictors of graduation from 2- and 4-year public colleges and universities in Kentucky, using students’ high school data and information about students’ first and/or second years in college.
Identifying Potential Dropouts:
Key Lessons for
Building an Early Warning Data System
This white paper was prepared for Staying the Course: High Standards and Improved Graduation Rates, a joint project of Achieve and JFF funded by the Carnegie Corp. of New York. Its goal is to provide policymakers with an overview of research about the dropout problem and the best strategies for building an early warning data system that can signal which students and schools are most in need of interventions.
Identifying Potential Dropouts: Key Lessons for
Building an Early Warning Data System
A Dual Agenda of High Standards and High Graduation Rates
Criag Jerald. Jobs For the Future. Read the report online here or download here.
What Factors Predict High School Graduation
in the Los Angeles Unified School District?
Because the paths to high school graduation or to dropping out begin years before these events, identifying relevant school-related factors requires a comprehensive analysis of data at the district, school, and student levels. In collaboration with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the authors of this study analyzed district data to track the educational progress of all first-time 2001-02 9th graders, from the 6th grade through to their expected graduation in the spring of 2005. This group consisted of 48,561 students who attended 163 LAUSD middle and high schools. The analysis of transcript records, standardized test scores, and a broad database of student and school characteristics sheds light on the middle and high school factors related to high school persistence and graduation.
The study exposes troubling rates of academic failure, but it also offers reasons for hope, demonstrating that academic experiences and school factors play a much larger role than student demographics in determining graduation rates, and that there is tremendous variation in the extent to which schools can have success with populations of students whose odds of graduation are typically quite poor.
What Factors Predict High School Graduation in the Los Angeles Unified School District? Silver, D., Saunders, M. (University of California, Los Angeles), Zarate, E. (University of California, Irvine) View the paper online here.
The On-Track Indicator as a Predictor of High School Graduation.
The first year of high school is a critical transition period for students. Those who succeed in their first year are more likely to continue to do well in the following years and eventually graduate. Because a successful transition into high school is so important, in 1999 the Consortium developed an indicator to gauge whether students make sufficient progress in their first year of high school to be on-track to graduate within four years. On-track students have completed enough credits by the end of the school year to be promoted to tenth grade, and have failed no more than one semester of a core subject area. The on-track indicator has since become part of the accountability system for Chicago public high schools.
Unlike the other indicators of high school performance—dropout rates and Prairie State Achievement Exam scores—the on-track indicator provides information about performance within students’ first year of school, making it a timely indicator of student progress. This report defines the on-track indicator in detail and shows that it is a better predictor of high school graduation than eighth-grade test scores or students’ background characteristics. We also compare on-track rates across schools and show systemwide trends over time. The evidence presented here suggests that the on-track indicator can be a valuable tool for parents, schools, and the school system as they work to improve students’ likelihood of graduating.
The On-Track Indicator as a Predictor of High School Graduation. Elaine Allensworth and John Easton. (2005). Chicago: Consortium on Chicago School Research. View the paper online here.