{"id":179926,"date":"2025-08-27T14:28:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/179926\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T14:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:28:10","slug":"philadelphia-high-school-dropout-prevention-program-expands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/179926\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia high school dropout prevention program expands"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia\u2019s free newsletter<\/a> to keep up with news on the city\u2019s public school system.<\/p>\n

A Philadelphia program focused on addressing the city\u2019s student dropout crisis is expanding into four new district schools this year.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia Academies Inc. \u2014 a longtime partner in dropout prevention efforts in the School District of Philadelphia \u2014 announced this month it is bringing its 9th Grade Success Network to Building 21, Franklin Learning Center, Philadelphia Military Academy, and Hill-Freedman World Academy for the 2025-26 school year. <\/p>\n

The program focuses on schools that serve students from traditionally marginalized groups, particularly Black students, who have faced systemic challenges to persisting in their education, leading to higher dropout rates, research has shown. <\/p>\n

School leaders and educators in the program get specialized professional training in adolescent development, relationship building, and intervention techniques. Ninth grade assistant principals also get regular coaching and assistance analyzing student data to ensure those most at risk of dropping out get the attention and support they need.<\/p>\n

LaTrina Stewart, ninth grade assistant principal at Franklin Learning Center, will be participating for the first time this school year. She said she\u2019s hoping her students feel \u201cultra supported\u201d this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to have to dig a child out of a hole and I don\u2019t want children to have to dig themselves out of a hole,\u201d she said. \u201cThat safety net to catch them before they even get in the hole \u2014 that\u2019s what the ninth grade academy provides for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this expansion, the 9th Grade Success Network will operate in 28 district schools, with a goal to reach 32 schools by next year, said Christopher Goins, the president and CEO of Philadelphia Academies Inc., or PAI. This is the first year the program will work in selective admissions schools like Franklin Learning Center and Hill-Freedman. The program is funded through 2027 with $2.6 million from the School District of Philadelphia and $8 million from the Neubauer Family Foundation.<\/p>\n

Nadia Schafer, director of the 9th Grade Success Network at PAI, told Chalkbeat the program is expanding because it\u2019s working.<\/p>\n

We’re here to help.<\/p>\n

Every day, Chalkbeat Philadelphia reporters are answering your questions, following the money, and digging into what’s happening in the city’s public schools. Keep up with our free newsletter, delivered every Wednesday and Friday morning.<\/p>\n

The program served more than 4,500 students in the 2024-25 school year, according to Philadelphia Academies data. A ninth grade student is considered \u201con-track\u201d to graduation by the district and PAI if they earn at least one credit in each of the core subjects English, math, science, and social studies, plus one additional credit in a subject of their choosing. Students who earn all As and Bs in their four core classes plus at least one additional class are considered \u201cfirmly on-track,\u201d Schafer said.<\/p>\n

For the students the program served last year, Latino boys and Black boys improved their \u201con-track\u201d rates by 5 percentage points and 4.4 percentage points, respectively. <\/p>\n

Thomas Murtaugh, ninth and 12th grade principal at the School of the Future, said his student on-track data \u201cdrastically improved\u201d since being part of the program. The share of students on-track to graduation went up 27% in the second year of the program and has remained consistently high, he said.<\/p>\n

District officials noticed too, Schafer said. In fact, district data shows <\/a>the \u201con-track\u201d strategy contributed to a 10.2 percentage point increase in the four-year graduation rate over the last seven years. Superintendent Tony Watlington has also reported<\/a> the district\u2019s dropout rate was down by more than a thousand students last school year, due in part, to the on-track program.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s evidence this approach is working in other large urban school districts. Philly\u2019s strategy was built off of a blueprint initiated in Chicago<\/a>, which has also reported all-time high graduation rates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ebony Hollingsworth-Lowery, ninth grade assistant principal at William Sayre High School is about to start her fourth year with the program, and she said it\u2019s been a \u201croadmap for success.\u201d <\/p>\n

As a former athlete, Hollingsworth-Lowery said the leadership coaching and regular check-ins work for her because they form a kind of \u201cplaybook\u201d to help keep her and her ninth grade team of counselors, community advocates, educators, school staff, and administrators all focused on the same goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt forces you to really look at your students, your teachers, and what systems are in place to be able to be successful,\u201d she said. The program instills a way to \u201cknow your students, know who they are, but also, most importantly, know their needs, because if we can\u2019t meet their needs, they\u2019re going to retract from school.\u201d <\/p>\n

But not every high school is equipped to take on the program, according to Schafer, and there\u2019s a competitive application process for schools to be selected. Schools with lower graduation rates and lower on-track rates are given priority because \u201cwe think it\u2019s important to spend our resources where they\u2019re going to make the most difference,\u201d Schafer said. <\/p>\n

Schools must also have a ninth grade administrator and a ninth grade core team of educators dedicated to teaching solely ninth grade, \u201cnot someone who is teaching English 1, 2, 3, and 4,\u201d Schafer said. <\/p>\n

With the ongoing teacher shortage and funding constraints<\/a> in the city, those requirements can be a challenge for schools. That\u2019s why PAI opened applications to criteria-based schools for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough when maybe it\u2019s not quite time\u201d for some of those neighborhood schools to join the program, Schafer said, but she said they are working with the district to get other neighborhood schools \u201cready to be able to take on this work in a future year.\u201d <\/p>\n

For Stewart, the resources that the success network provides, \u201cshould be a part of what high schools get without it being left up to what principals have in their budget,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

But this year at least, she\u2019s hopeful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need this,\u201d Stewart said.<\/p>\n

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia\u2019s free newsletter to keep up with news on the city\u2019s public school system.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":179927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[101685,5229,40980,101686,998,101682,26251,101684,101683,50,1448,2830,1311,18823,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-179926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-brother-john","9":"tag-america","10":"tag-chalkbeat","11":"tag-dobbins-career-and-technical-education-high-school","12":"tag-freelance","13":"tag-headway","14":"tag-high-school","15":"tag-history-teacher-john-winters","16":"tag-lianne-milton","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-pa","19":"tag-pennsylvania","20":"tag-philadelphia","21":"tag-philly","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115101204904778146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}