• "The Make-or-Break Year: Solving the Dropout Crisis One Ninth Grader at a Time" by Emily Krone Phillips

    Truly a case study of the Chicago Public School system pre-COVID.

    "Researchers have shown that freshman year is the "make-or-break" year for high school graduation. Students who receive more than one F in a semester during their freshman year are very unlikely to graduate..." (page 3) The University of Chicago Consortium on School Research found that students who passed their ninth grade courses almost always graduated from high school but those who failed more than one semester almost always did not. (page 4)

    Kids who struggle at age 14 don't receive enough support to bounce back.

    "Much of the discussion in education reform centers on implementing new technology, curricula, and school models, and on attracting more investment and talent. Meetings where educators gather to talk about students? Systems and  structures to ensure that students reliably receive the support they need? That's not on anyone's short list of cutting-edge, high-impact reform." (page 8-9) But that is exactly what needs to happen!

    "Research on adolescence shows that freshman year is critical for determining whether students persist to graduation. It is during this period that students either form an attachment to school and become part of the larger school community -or begin to drift away. The teenage brain is hardwired to connect with and conform to peers, even as it pushes back against authority." (page 15)

    "...Duncan often spoke about the need to build the professional capacity of teachers and principals to meet higher standards. He..."large investments in training for early career and veteran teachers." (Page 98).

    "The Freshman OnTrack movement in Chicago...provided a common, well-defined goal for teachers of freshman to work toward: preventing course failure...'It was building relationships with kids, finding ways to gather teachers to collaborate and talk about kids, making small plans, and then checking to see if the plans worked.'" (pages 104-105)

    "...Freshman OnTrack was about belief in kids: the belief that is was possible to keep most kids on-track for graduation and lives of opportunity. Ultimately, all of this belief trickled down to the students, who were the ones who most required the belief. The belief that they belonged in school. The belief that they could succeed. These beliefs, if established freshman year, could propel students through to graduation." (page 301)