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Chris West, On- and Off-Track Indicators for High School Graduation and College Success, Publications, Reports | Comments

Just the Right Mix: Using an Early Warning Indicators Approach to Identify Potential Dropouts Across All Grades

Each school year, roughly a thousand students drop out of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). However, unlike other large, urban school districts where students who drop out skip school and are suspended often (Balfanz & Byrnes, 2010), students who drop out of MCPS are present in school; they just are not doing well academically. According […]

Analytics, Chris West, Publications, Reports, Size and Characteristics of the Dropout / Graduation Rate Crisis | Comments

Still a Freshman: Examining the Prevalence and Characteristics of Ninth-Grade Retention Across Six States

Because ninth grade is a make-or-break year for increasing graduation rates, schools with high ninth-grade retention rates face many challenges in improving their graduation rates. In many of these schools there is a mismatch between the number of students who need help and the help available. Ninth-grade retention rates, however, can act as an early […]

Chris West, Point of View, Publications, Reports | Comments

Rural ‘Dropout Factories’ Often Overshadowed

Education Week In the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains here in the northwest corner of South Carolina, high schools’ attempts to curb student dropouts may not match what many people picture when they hear talk of the nation’s “dropout factories.” Yet one-fifth of the 2,000 high schools nationwide categorized that way by researchers at Johns […]

Brother's Keeper, Chris West, Point of View | Comments

How 9th-Grade Gridlock Keeps Boys out of College

The Chronicle of Higher Education | February 7, 2010 Colleges face a challenge to masculinity that bulging muscles, rumbling voices, and jacked-up pickup trucks won’t remedy. Despite the fact that men and women get equal salary bumps for earning a bachelor’s degree, far more women than men are getting the message. As a result, nearly […]

Raising Graduation Rates: A Series of Data Briefs Progress Toward Increasing National and State Graduation Rates

This is the first in a series of briefs examining the progress in raising high school graduation rates over the past decade. During this period, the prevailing view on high school graduation rates has moved from the belief that essentially everyone who wanted to, or needed to, graduate from high school was doing so to […]