RESEARCH REPORT NOVEMBER 2014 Looking Forward to High School and College Middle Grade Indicators of Readiness in Chicago Public Schools Elaine M. Allensworth, Julia A. Gwynne, Paul Moore, and Marisa de la Torre TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Executive Summary Chapter 5 55 Who Is at Risk of Earning Less 7 Introduction Than As or Bs in High School? Chapter 1 Chapter 6 17 Issues in Developing and Indicators of Whether Students Evaluating Indicators 63 Will Meet Test Benchmarks Chapter 2 Chapter 7 23 Changes in Academic Performance Who Is at Risk of Not Reaching from Eighth to Ninth Grade 75 the PLAN and ACT Benchmarks? Chapter 3 Chapter 8 29 Middle Grade Indicators of How Grades, Attendance, and High School Course Performance 81 Test Scores Change Chapter 4 Chapter 9 47 Who Is at Risk of Being Off-Track Interpretive Summary at the End of Ninth Grade? 93 99 References 104 Appendices A-E ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to acknowledge the many people who contributed to this work. We thank Robert Balfanz and Julian Betts for providing us with very thoughtful review and feedback which were used to revise this report. We also thank Mary Ann Pitcher and Sarah Duncan, at the Network for College Success, and members of our Steering Committee, especially Karen Lewis, for their valuable feedback. Our colleagues at UChicago CCSR and UChicago UEI, including Shayne Evans, David Johnson, Thomas Kelley-Kemple, and Jenny Nagaoka, were instrumental in helping us think about the ways in which this research would be most useful to practitioners and policy makers. We were fortunate to receive substantial feedback and assistance from the UChicago CCSR communications staff, Bronwyn McDaniel, Jessica Puller, and Emily Krone. We thank the Chicago Public Schools for providing us the data that allowed us to do this work. All work at UChicago CCSR is also supported by operating grants from the Spencer Foundation and the Lewis-Sebring Family Foundation. This study was made possible by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to which we are very grateful. This report was produced by UChicago CCSR’s publications and Graphic Design: Jeff Hall Design communications staff: Emily Krone, Director for Outreach and Photography: David Schalliol Communication; Bronwyn McDaniel, Senior Manager for Outreach Editing: Ann Lindner and Communications; and Jessica Puller, Communications Specialist. 11.2014/pdf/[email protected] MIDDLE GRADE INDICATORS OF READINESS Executive Summary Across the country, policymakers are raising the expectations for educational attainment. With changes to the economy resulting in dire economic prospects for high school dropouts, high school graduation has become a necessity. In fact, high school graduation is no longer considered sufficient; policymakers are calling on the nation’s schools to graduate all students ready for college and careers. Much of the pressure to improve educational attain- messages that policymakers and practitioners hear 1 ment is on high schools, but focus has also turned to about what matters for academic success, these earlier grades. There is a very large population of findings are intended to clarify which factors are students who struggle with the transition from the most strongly related to students’ educational middle grades to high school, raising concerns that attainment. high school failures are partially a function of poor • Which students are likely to be successful in high middle grade preparation. As a result, middle grade school—passing their classes, earning high grades practitioners are grappling with questions about what that put them on-track for college enrollment and skills students need to succeed in high school, which graduation, and achieving test scores at ACT’s markers they should use to gauge whether students are benchmarks—and which students are at risk of ready to succeed in high school and beyond, and wheth- failing to meet those standards. These findings are er it is possible to identify in middle grades students intended to help schools develop intervention plans who are likely to struggle in high school and college. and practices around specific students to help them This report is designed to provide a detailed picture reach particular outcomes. They can also provide a of the relationship between students’ performance in guide for parents about what level of performance the middle grades (grades five through eight) and their their child needs to be likely to graduate from high subsequent performance in high school and college school and be ready for college. among students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). • The degree to which student performance changes Specifically, the report shows: during the middle grades—showing why students • Which of many potential middle grade indicators— leave the middle grades with different levels of including attendance rates, grades in specific classes readiness. For example, do students need to start and GPAs, test scores, study habits, grit, discipline the middle grades with high performance to leave records, and background characteristics—are most middle school with high levels of readiness? Or does predictive of high school success. It also shows the students’ performance change considerably while degree to which high school readiness is a function they are in the middle grades? These findings are of the high school students choose or the middle intended to help practitioners and policymakers set school they attended. With all of the conflicting realistic goals for improvement. Executive Summary KEY FINDINGS: GPAs from different middle schools are not equiva- lent, but the differences are generally less than a half Middle Grade Information Can Be of a GPA point. We often hear that grades are subjec- Used to Create Simple Indicator tive—that an A average from one school is not equal to Systems of High School Graduation an A average from another school. This suggests that and College Readiness students with the same academic records are more likely Many characteristics of students are associated to succeed if they came from one school than another. In with their academic outcomes, from background fact, students with the same grades, attendance, and test characteristics to test scores, grades, attendance, score records upon leaving eighth grade are more likely and discipline records, to noncognitive factors. With to succeed in high school if they came from some middle so many factors associated with later outcomes, it may schools than from others, net of the effects of which high seem like practitioners would need complicated models schools students attend (see Chapter 3). At the same to gauge students’ likelihood of success in later years. time, the differences in success among students with the However, after taking into account just two or three same grades from different middle schools are small, key middle school indicators, other information about compared to the differences in success among students students only marginally improves the prediction of with different grades at the same school. As discussed later outcomes. in Chapter 3, an A average from one school represents a 2 better likelihood of success than a B average from any Grades and failures are best predicted by earlier other school. Differences by schools are as much as half grades and attendance. High school test scores a GPA point, at the most. are strongly predicted by earlier test scores. While it is common for people to believe that grades Other information about students provides only have different meanings across schools, it also appears negligible improvement in the prediction of their that test scores also have different meanings across outcomes, beyond the top predictors. Background schools. Students with the same middle grade test scores characteristics, study habits, and grit are not predictive are more likely to score well on the high school tests if of high school performance, once students’ middle they came from particular middle schools than others grade GPAs, attendance, and test scores are taken into (see Chapter 6). People tend to see test scores as objec- account. Background characteristics (e.g., race, gender, tive, since everyone takes the same test, but students neighborhood poverty, free lunch eligibility, being can be prepared to do well on the middle grade tests in old-for-grade, and special education status) are all ways that do not necessarily translate into higher per- related to high school grades and test scores, but they formance later on. do not tell us any more about who will pass, get good grades, or score well on tests in high school, once Test scores are much weaker indicators of high school we take into account students’ eighth-grade GPAs, grades than middle school grades and attendance. attendance, and test scores. Students’ misconduct Many high school interventions are based on test score and suspension records in middle school are also not proficiency—meeting standards on tests, or reading predictive of high school performance, once we take at grade level. This is the reasoning behind programs into account their attendance, grades, and test scores. that offer support based on test scores, such as double- Likewise, students’ reports of their study habits dose coursing or grade promotion standards in middle in eighth grade, and their responses on a grit scale school that delay students’ entry into ninth grade based measuring perseverance in the middle grades, are on test scores. However, while middle grade test scores not predictive of their performance in high school are moderately related to passing classes and getting beyond their current grades and attendance.1 high grades in high school, most of the relationship between test scores and later performance seems to work through students’ grades. That is, students with UCHICAGO CCSR Research Report | Middle Grade Indicators of Readiness in Chicago Public Schools strong test scores are more likely to get good grades middle grades; early intervention might help them get than students with weak test scores, but it is the grades on a path to high school and college readiness.