The Make-or-Break Year: Solving the Dropout Crisis One Ninth Grader at a Time

by Emily Krone Phillips

Overview

A Washington Post Bestseller

An entirely fresh approach to ending the high school dropout crisis is revealed in this groundbreaking chronicle of unprecedented transformation in a city notorious for its "failing schools"

In eighth grade, Eric thought he was going places. But by his second semester of freshman year at Hancock High, his D's in Environmental Science and French, plus an F in Mr. Castillo's Honors Algebra class, might have suggested otherwise. Research shows that students with more than one semester F during their freshman year are very unlikely to graduate. If Eric had attended Hancock—or any number of Chicago's public high schools—just a decade earlier, chances are good he would have dropped out. Instead, Hancock's new way of responding to failing grades, missed homework, and other red flags made it possible for Eric to get back on track.

The Make-or-Break Year is the largely untold story of how a simple idea—that reorganizing schools to get students through the treacherous transitions of freshman year greatly increases the odds of those students graduating—changed the course of two Chicago high schools, an entire school system, and thousands of lives. Marshaling groundbreaking research on the teenage brain, peer relationships, and academic performance, journalist turned communications expert Emily Krone Phillips details the emergence of Freshman OnTrack, a program-cum-movement that is translating knowledge into action—and revolutionizing how teachers grade, mete out discipline, and provide social, emotional, and academic support to their students.

This vivid description of real change in a faulty system will captivate anyone who cares about improving our nation's schools; it will inspire educators and families to reimagine their relationships with students like Eric, and others whose stories affirm the pivotal nature of ninth grade for all young people. In a moment of relentless focus on what doesn't work in education and the public sphere, Phillips's dramatic account examines what does.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620973240
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	01/08/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Emily Krone Phillips is the communications director at the Spencer Foundation. She worked previously as an educator reporter and as the communications director at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, where the Freshman OnTrack research originated and inspired her to write The Make-or-Break Year (The New Press). She lives in Chicago.
Emily Krone Phillips worked as an education reporter before landing a job as communications director at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, where the Freshmen On-Track research originated and inspired her to write this book. She lives in Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

Winter 2018

For decades, ninth graders entering Chicago's public high schools were as likely to drop out as they were to graduate. Then, between 2006 and 2016, the city's graduation rate jumped from 57 to 74 percent. Phillips (formerly, communications director, Univ. of Chicago Consortium on Sch. Research) explains how researchers, teachers, and others worked to transform the city's graduation rate into a subject of national interest. This story turns conventional wisdom on its head. Researchers discovered that academically "most dropouts were virtually indistinguishable from graduates until they entered high school." Solution: create more supports to ease adolescents' transition from their close-knit K-8 experience to the more autonomous and possibly alienating environment of high school. Subsequently, the initiative Freshman OnTrack emerged; critical to its success is that teachers learned to collaborate more effectively to help at-risk students. Throughout this well-researched book, Phillips alternates between letting students and teachers speak and offering insights from academic literature and the history of educational reform movements, resulting in an engaging read. VERDICT One of the few comprehensive accounts of Chicago's remarkable educational triumph, this title deserves a place on the shelves of college, public, and high school libraries.—Seth Kershner, Northwestern Connecticut Community Coll. Lib., Winsted

Library Journal

Praise for The Make-or-Break Year:
“A remarkable book.”
—Washington Post

“A revealing and honest look at an intervention that's making a difference.”
—Booklist

“Phillips makes it clear that changing outcomes is reason enough to keep the [Freshman OnTrack] program alive—and to see it replicated elsewhere. A good case, if one largely of interest to educational policymakers and activists.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A remarkable, even astonishing book. Detailed and compelling. . . . How a book about educational philosophy can also be a page-turner, I don't know, but that's what Krone Phillips has given us. Every educator in America needs to read The Make-or-Break Year—now.”
—Amy Ellis Nutt, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer and co-author of The Teenage Brain

“In ninth grade, nothing matters more than belonging. With profound respect for both youth and their educators, this superb book sets out all the factors that make school a place where freshmen feel they belong.”
—Kathleen Cushman, author of Fires in the Bathroom

“I highly recommend this book for educators who seek to do more to advance equity and increase student success.”
—Pedro Noguera, director of the Center for the Transformation of Schools at UCLA

“A decisive, urgent case for intervening in the ninth grade . . . clear-eyed and hopeful, this book is required reading for anybody interested in addressing the dropout crisis.”
—Michelle Kuo, author of Reading with Patrick

“Refreshing and expertly reported . . . essential reading for anyone who cares about student success. It will profoundly change the way we see high school in America.”
—Peg Tyre, author of The Trouble with Boys

From the Publisher

2018-10-15

Want to build the middle class? Then keep 13-year-olds from falling through the cracks and failing high school.

Phillips, a former education reporter who works at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, chronicles that group's Freshmen OnTrack program, which works throughout the city's school system to foster retention of at-risk students. In an opening case study, she highlights a Latino boy who, having been rejected for a "selective enrollment" public school, entered a school that would not challenge him and quietly began to fade away. For decades, Phillips notes, a child entering Chicago's public school system had roughly the same chance of dropping out as graduating, and at tremendous social cost—for, she adds, "if ninth grade is the make-or-break year for high school graduation, then it is also the pivotal year for a shot at the middle class." That's of material interest, for over a lifetime of earning, a high school graduate will bring in about $670,000 more than a high school dropout, and that means more tax revenue for municipalities, states, and even the national government. Performance in ninth grade turns out to be predictive but by no means irreversible, and programs like OnTrack are meant not just to help students adjust to the rigors of schoolwork, but also to form connections to school and cohort by such means as peer mentoring. Naturally, school administrations are all about numbers and testing, and the OnTrack program doesn't neatly fit with some of those aims and perhaps even some of the aims of the children themselves. As one high school principal says, "We want to be on-track because we want to change outcomes for kids…a kid doesn't give a shit if they are on track." Phillips makes it clear that changing outcomes is reason enough to keep the program alive—and to see it replicated elsewhere.

A good case, if one largely of interest to educational policymakers and activists.

Kirkus Reviews