Our state legislators are stuck between a rock and a hard place with our state budget.
As principals of two high schools in one of Washington’s largest school districts, we are already anticipating how their choices will affect our students, teachers, staff and families.
It is amidst this fiscal challenge that we are coming together to elevate the state-funded Ninth Grade Success grant program and how its persistently successful outcomes have transformed the entire high school experience for our students while saving the state money in the process.
The foundation of the Ninth Grade Success approach is a shift in our prevailing mindset: students should receive our most focused, dedicated support during the critical transition into high school — not, as has long been the case, only during their final years in our buildings.
Decades of research by the University of Chicago validate this approach. When students pass all their classes in ninth grade, they are three times more likely to graduate high school on time. In fact, students passing all of their freshman classes predicts their likelihood of on-time graduation more strongly than their race, ethnicity, level of poverty or test scores combined. In recognition of the predictive power this holds, the Washington state superintendent’s office has adopted the Ninth Grade On-Track metric (the percentage of students passing freshman classes) as one of our state’s core success indicators.
Evergreen Public Schools in Vancouver was the first district in the state to fully adopt the Ninth Grade Success approach when it was launched in 2019. Now, we are fortunate to be the veterans in a network of 68 schools serving 19,000 students throughout the state. The grant program provides us essential investment in collaborative time for our educators to build that bridge for students entering high school.
As those who work in schools know, our educators are already stretched thin ensuring that students receive high-quality instruction. However, even despite the chaos of the pandemic, the Ninth Grade Success approach has never felt like extra. Instead, its data-driven and student-centered framework for continuous improvement has been so effective that it undergirds how we approach student success in every grade level.
A student will always be more successful academically when they feel more connected emotionally and socially. With ninth-graders, particularly, every day counts. It is essential that we are able to invest our attention on this critical, often fragile transition and ensure that every student feels connected to at least one adult in the building.
At Evergreen High School, we noticed that our students who identified as Pacific Islander were struggling academically in comparison to their peers. Through the grant-funded collaboration time and individualized coaching we received, we were able to identify the problem, make a plan to investigate with students directly, and follow-up on what we learned: these students came to school but were avoiding classes where they did not have friends. Our team then made a bold move to create a cohort specifically for these students. We immediately saw their rate of students who were on-track increase from 38% to 42% in one year. Two years in, almost 90% of our Pacific Islander cohort is on-track to pass all their freshman classes, currently making them the highest performing cohort in our entire school.
In the context of our state budget crisis, it is understandable that state officials have to take a hard look at every penny. From our perspective, if we had to put it in financial terms, the Ninth Grade Success approach has a great ROI (return on investment). Although students are not dollars, it does cost money to provide remedial credit recovery and summer school to the freshmen who fail classes. And that doesn’t begin to account for the ongoing support they’ll need if that trend continues. Furthermore, despite its targeted approach, we have each seen our entire student populations benefit from this program.
We both chose to be educators because we care deeply about young people. If the state legislature does not continue the state’s commitment to the Ninth Grade Success grant program, going on its sixth year in our state, our students would immediately feel the loss. Legislators should invest our resources in this program that is already working to successfully transform our schools. From where we’re sitting, it’s the easiest choice they can make.
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Charles Anthony is the Principal of Mountain View High School in Evergreen Public Schools (Clark County). He has worked in schools as an educator for the past 15 years. Charles is proud to have served as a teacher of business, health, and physical education classes as well as a former athletics coach. He lives in Vancouver, Washington with his family. Danny Orrantia is the Principal of Evergreen High School in Evergreen Public Schools (Clark County). He was a member of the first cohort of educators to bring the Ninth Grade Success Approach to Washington schools starting in 2017. Danny is also a former teacher of instrumental music, band, and orchestra and is celebrating his twentieth year in education. He lives in Vancouver, Washington.
