The ninth-grade bottleneck: an enrollment bulge in a transition year that demands careful attention and action

School Administrator, March, 2005 by Anne Wheelock, Jing Miao

When we place the rise in grade 9 enrollment alongside the fall in grade 10 enrollment, the 9th-grade bulge becomes apparent. This bulge has grown most dramatically in the past two decades, first in the context of the standards movement that followed the publication of "A Nation at Risk" in 1983, then again as states introduced test-based school accountability programs and student graduation testing in the 1990s. In 2000, 9th-grade enrollment numbered 440,000 more than grade 8 enrollment and 520,000 more than grade 10 enrollment.

Increasing attrition of students between grades 9 and 10 and higher enrollments of students in grade 9 relative to grade 8 reflects the fact that more students nationally are being flunked to repeat grade 9. This pattern bodes ill for future graduation rates as the 9th-grade bulge becomes an ever-narrowing bottleneck. As reported by researchers Lorrie Shepard and Mary Lee Smith in Flunking Grades: Research and Policies on Retention, repeating any grade undermines academic achievement and contributes to dropping out. More recent evidence from Texas and Philadelphia likewise shows that persistence to 12th grade is dramatically lower for students repeating grade 9.

Better Visibility

Reducing the 9th-grade bulge and improving graduation rates requires educational leaders first to make problems visible, then take steps to support on-time progress of the most vulnerable students through the education pipeline. We suggest the following:

* Make the 9th-grade bulge visible and use data for school improvement.

In recent years, school accountability policies have defined school improvement primarily in terms of test score gains. No Child Left Behind has added a new dimension to assessing school performance by requiring schools to report graduation rates to the public. Unfortunately, just as high stakes attached to test score results may contribute to using 9th grade as a holding tank for the weakest students and result in removing some from the test-taking population in the later high school grades, attaching high stakes to graduation data could work against authentic efforts to keep students in school.

We support reporting graduation rates and related data to the public. But we encourage using these data to plan for improved practice in schools with weak promoting and graduating power rather than to determine penalties for lapses or rewards for improvement. We believe improving practice in the 9th grade in particular can significantly boost the number of students who progress into grade 10 and graduate on time. We also believe that schools can graduate additional students who need five years to graduate.

In practice, the choices education leaders make about the denominator used in calculating graduation rates makes a significant difference in the results. Some states and districts now use the test-taking population in grade 10 or even grade 12 enrollment as the base for figuring rates. This practice eliminates students who started with their cohort in grade 9 from the calculation and results in graduation rates that look better than the reality. Others use grade 9 as the denominator, a practice that results in graduation rates that more closely reflect fluctuations in the 9th-grade bulge.