Paying attention to 9th graders
Sub Title:
Graduation rates keep climbing, but many students still founder in the first year of high school.
Author:
by Dale Mezzacappa
As the Notebook does its eighth annual edition focusing on the city’s dropout crisis, this is both encouraging and sobering news.
Encouraging because the gains are slow and steady, which makes it more likely that they are real, said Ruth Curran Neild, lead author of Unfulfilled Promise, the 2006 report that first offered hard data and highlighted the depth of the problem in Philadelphia.
But sobering because there are entrenched issues that the city’s educational leaders have yet to conquer. One of those is 9th grade, still where most dropouts run aground.
Image:
Image Caption:
Freshmen (from left) Jimik Ligon, Nychelle Hamiel, and Tyreek Bookard confer between classes at Mastery-Gratz High School. The students said that they appreciate the personal attention they get in the school’s self-contained 9th-grade academy. “They give us a lot of opportunities,” said Hamiel, who is in the honors program.
Photo Credits:
Harvey Finkle