A story in The Dallas Morning News today about a new initiative in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school district to improve the success of ninth graders, “Motivation, Extra Help Make Ninth Grade More Manageable,” touches on a challenge faced by many school districts across the country: Making sure freshman year is not the beginning of an academic slide into four years of underachievement, or worse, dropping out of school.
The story notes that nearly a quarter of the district’s 9th graders were held back after the 2004-05 school year.
It will be interesting to see what impact the initiative has on such statistics.