Nearly half of Philadelphia students who will drop out of the city’s public school system before graduating from high school can be identified as early as 6th grade, a study concludes.
A summary of the report, “Keeping Middle Grades Students on Track to Graduation,” is available from the Philadelphia Education Fund. (Requires Powerpoint)
Philadelphia 6th graders with low attendance rates, poor behavior, or failing grades in reading and math have little chance of graduating from high school on time, and more than half will end up as dropouts, the study found.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore followed students who were 6th graders during the 1996-97 school year and gauged their academic progress through 2003-04, a year after they were scheduled to graduate.
