Do you have a child who will someday be a ninth or tenth grader? Did you know that there is an 18-week window during ninth and tenth grade that determines whether your child will graduate or drop out of school? I didn’t, but now I do.
 
Yesterday afternoon, I spoke to the Chicago’s Principals & Administrators Association.  What an inspiring group of influencers! The challenges they tackle every day include many of the most pressing priorities our communities and families face.

We focused our discussion on ways to prevent students from dropping out of school. We looked at Vital Behaviors and Influence strategies.

Two behaviors are vital in preventing students from dropping out:

• They need to pass all their courses in the final quarter of their ninth grade year and
• They need to have perfect attendance during the first quarter of their tenth grade year.

If both of these behaviors happen, the student won’t drop out.

Together, we brainstormed strategies in each of the six sources of influence. The result was more than a dozen different strategies all aimed at our two vital behaviors. I won’t try to detail all the ideas here, but I’d like to share a few.

• Have teachers meet weekly during the last quarter of ninth grade to identify struggling students.
  
• Meet with these students, explain why this quarter is so important, and develop a plan with them.
• Pair students and their parents into “teams” that are responsible for each others’ attendance and success. Have parents set up rewards for their children.
• Create career-related field-trips for ninth graders to show them the interesting jobs they can have with a high-school degree.
• When a student is identified as struggling during the last quarter of ninth grade, arrange a visit with his/her parents to explain why this time in their child’s life is so critical.
• Saturate ninth grade classrooms with volunteers and tutors during the last quarter of the year.
• Find opinion-leader groups within the community—scouting, Urban League, churches, key businesses—and ask them to help during these critical two quarters.
• Have ninth-grade and tenth grade teachers meet and talk about the students who’ve done poorly in the last quarter of ninth grade.
• Track tenth graders’ attendance, and take action very quickly when problems begin—especially with students who did poorly in ninth grade. Treat each absence as an emergency.
• Create incentives for teachers who keep students in school during the first quarter of tenth grade.

Some of these ideas will be hard to implement, and others sounded better at the time than they do now. Our work isn’t over, but I think we made interesting progress. I’d love to have you readers add to these ideas.