Super-Early Warning of High-School Failure

The article: “New Dropout-Warning System Flags Pupils’ Risks in 1st Grade” by Sarah Sparks in Education Week, 7 August 2013 (32 37, p. 10); http://www.edweek.org.

In this Education Week article, Sarah Sparks reports on a dropout-warning system being developed in Montgomery County, Maryland. By looking back at the school records of students in the class of 2011 and 2012, the district identified telltale signs as early as the spring of Grade 1, as well as three other transition points – the fall of Grades 3, 6 and 9.

“It is like getting your blood pressure checked,” says Chris West, a former Montgomery County evaluation specialist. “You have to do it often and over time.” Here are the three most telling indicators of later problems:

- High absenteeism (missing 10 percent or more of school days);

- Discipline problems and, in the early grades, subtle signs like report-card notations that the student is not completing homework;

- Low report card grades in reading and mathematics (these had the highest correlation with future school failure).

Taken together, students’ attendance, behavior, and grades in first grade predicted about 75 percent of the students who dropped out in the 2011 and 2012 cohorts. Between 1/4 and 1/3 of students who had at least one warning sign in Grade 1 had more signs in Grades 6 and 9.

The district is focusing on report cards as the best data source. “A parent has the report card, student has a report card, teacher has a report card,” says Mr. West, “so if we base our conversation on the report card, at least everybody is talking from the same page.”

One finding in Montgomery County was that socioeconomic status and race were not the best predictors of eventual failure; the data showed that fewer than 40 percent of dropouts were from low-SES families. Rather, ELLs were overrepresented among dropouts, as were student with special needs. Looking at long-term data has revealed that there are lots of false positives: more than half of students flagged as potential dropouts in the early grades ended up graduating from high school.

The district is trying to figure out what is going on here: in some cases, excessive absence might have been caused by a case of chicken pox; in other cases, improved academic performance might be the result of a successful intervention program. “These kids do move in and out of these indicators,” says Mr. West.

The idea going forward is to implement interventions for at-risk students that will head off failure. “If these kids are always with us, we can do something about this,” says Mr. West. “Remember, these are signs of students who drop out – it does not mean they are dropouts… You will not reduce dropout rates by [identifying] the students; it’s what you do with them. Early-warning systems are part of an intervention strategy.”

The district is also analyzing data on Montgomery County high-school graduates, to see what correlates with their ability to be successful in college.

Summary reprinted from Marshall Memo 497, 12 August 2013.

Mr. Marshall is the author of The Marshall Memo, a weekly online newsletter summarizing the best ideas and research from 44 education publications.

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