Assisting Students Who Enter High School with Poor Academic Skills
MDRC - Issue Focus:
Too many students in the United States arrive at high school unprepared academically.
Many of these students fail to make the critical transition from middle school to high school successfully and drop out of school, often by tenth grade.
Those who don't drop out often find it difficult to earn credits necessary to advance from one grade to the next and perform poorly on measures of achievement, like course grades and standardized tests.
MDRC's recent evaluations of high school reform models --- particularly Talent Development and First Things First --- suggest that focusing on the critical transition year of ninth grade can make a real difference.
For example, the Ninth Grade Success Academy --- the centerpiece of the Talent Development model --- tackled the problem of low achievement among entering ninth-graders head-on through interconnected changes in scheduling and curricula and produced positive results for many students.
A double-blocked class schedule is useful because it permits students to attempt and earn more credits per year than other scheduling arrangements.
In contrast to a traditional schedule (entailing daily 50-minute classes) or a single-blocked schedule (involving 80- or 90-minute classes meeting every other day), a double-blocked schedule calls for classes that meet daily for extended periods.
Because double-blocked classes can cover in a single semester what would normally be a year's worth of material, students in Talent Development schools could earn four full course credits each term and eight credits each year, compared with the six or sometimes seven credits per year that students would receive in schools following a traditional schedule.
