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Roadmap for 9th Grade Success
- Assess district data system capacity and enhance where needed
- Establish district-school data partnership
- Designate school level data champion(s)
- Establish a district and school data reporting calendar
- Assess school and district staffs’ data literacy skills
- Articulate a plan for developing teams’ data literacy skills
- Build understanding of how to use relevant quantitative and qualitative data
Version 2022
- Articulate team purpose and working agreements
- Establish a calendar of meetings
- Establish understanding of 9th grade success research
- Participate in training and networking
- Establish a 9th Grade Success Team with cross-disciplinary membership and clearly defined roles
- Appoint team lead
- Appoint dedicated 9th grade administrators and counselors
- Schedule common planning time
- Establish a calendar of triangle meetings
- Routinize the use of action-oriented agendas
- Utilize discussion protocols
- Examine and respond to trend and student level data
- Establish short, medium and long term 9th grade success goals and benchmarks
- Identify and connect systems
- Train all stakeholders
- Communicate goals and progres
- Provide training on the impact of discourse on results
- Provide ongoing training on building and sustaining student-educator trust and family-educator trust
- Operationalize Key Performance Indicators
- Train staff on tiered structures and systems
- Articulate clear referral processes and protocols
- Utilize data to monitor and adjust interventions as needed
- Track student movement between tiers at regularly scheduled intervals as a key measure of efficacy
- Establish a Tier 3 team
- Reflect on the relationship between Tier 1 gaps and Tier 2 interventions
- Identify and respond to root causes
- Provide competency-based credit retrieval opportunities
- Amplify student voice through empathy interviews and student surveys
- Provide explicit instruction and ongoing supports to 9th graders on how to “do school” well
- Systematize regular check-ins with students
- Implement restorative practices
- Provide high dosage tutoring to identified students
- Provide focused instruction on core social emotional learning competencies
- Build a developmentally responsive master schedule
- Establish cohorts of 9th graders that share same courses and core teachers
- Establish a 9th grade academy structure
- Establish 9th grade advisories or seminars
- Conduct student-led conferences
- Establish mentorship for all
- Engage 9th graders in community building activities
- Institute an 8th to 9th grade orientation
- Institute a high-impact summer transition program
- Establish ongoing parent engagement
- Conduct summer activities
- Prioritize 9th grade when making teaching and counseling assignments
- Establish an early warning intervention system
- Provide supervised study hours
- Provide access to 8th grade data
- Set early timelines for high school admission
- Review data on incoming student
- Develop ongoing partnerships between key middle and high school personnel
- Provide proactive, targeted counseling supports
- Create a proportional grading scale
- Encourage retakes and re-dos
- Accept late work with no penalty
- Grade student work, not behavior
- Consider use of incomplete instead of F and support pathways to demonstrate competency before end of year
- Implement standards-based grading
- Embed literacy instruction
- Develop culturally responsive, standards-aligned curriculum
- Administer common assessments
- Analyze student work to inform ongoing improvement
- Establish peer collaboration, observation & feedback loops
- Integrate academic and social-emotional learning competencies
- Design lessons to accommodate for learner variability
- Develop learning partnerships with students
- Implement a standard set of rituals and routines
