Author: Amanda HorwitzPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 16
Book Description
The transition between middle and high school is a defining moment for students on whether they drop out of school or progress to graduation. A majority of the students who eventually fail to graduate fall through the cracks during this transition period. This research brief gives several recommendations on how schools and school districts can help students make successful transitions to high school, including: (1) Districts should explicitly target initiatives and interventions at the ninth grade level, addressing both the academic and environmental challenges of transition; (2) Districts need to sustain a system-wide focus on explicit literacy instruction to improve student outcomes in high school; (3) Districts should combine structural changes with meaningful curricular and instructional supports; (4) Although remediation of struggling students can be a useful tool, a challenging academic curriculum may help keep students engaged and yield achievement gains; (5) Districts should develop student-level indicators/tracking systems to help target support and identify at-risk students before they fall too far off track in the transition to high school; and (6) The federal government and private philanthropy should invest in rigorous studies of how to use data and data systems to improve support and instruction, particularly for students making the transition to high school. (Contains 40 notes.).
