To keep high school students on track, there’s no time like the beginning

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Dozier, an assistant principal at Harper High School in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood, took a big risk. She hung a giant board in the main hallway showing each ninth-grader’s academic progress under three headings: green for on-track, yellow for close to on-track and red for off-track.

The data showed those students more likely to graduate in four years. University of Chicago Consortium scholars were also stunned to discover that passing courses in ninth grade was a better predictor of graduation than test scores, family income and race. They noted that some schools in low-income neighborhoods did better on this than others.