The ninth grade problem

Alan Borsuk has an article in today's Journal Sentinel on the MPS report card. Borsuk singles out the ninth grade bulge, reflecting students who are stuck in ninth grade for two or more years. Ninth grade in Milwaukee seems to be a problematic year for several reasons, and not just because students have trouble getting through it.

When I looked at test scores for individual MPS students several years ago, I found that ninth grade was the only year in which the average student scored lower than that same student did the year before. At the time, tests were given in the spring, so most growth (or in this case lack of growth) could be credited to the grade in which the test was given.

There are several possible explanations for this apparent backsliding. The most optimistic is that the ninth grade test is poorly aligned with what is taught in ninth grade, so that students are learning material that does not appear on the test. A far more likely explanation, in my view, is that the high schools don't know their students, so many ninth graders waste the year on material they already had while others waste the year because they are in over their heads.

A look at eighth grade scores for the incoming freshmen painted a picture of the impossible academic diversity facing a typical ninth grade teachers. A class of thirty students would include ones scoring below the average third-grader on eighth grade exams and others outscoring the average tenth grader. How could a teacher hope to meet the needs of this wildly divergent group. If I were running a high school, I would spend the first week testing the student and then sorting them into classes that would meet their needs.