Ninth Grade Success Team in Vancouver Works to Close Opportunity Gaps for Students

At Heritage High School in Vancouver, focusing on the success of ninth graders has expanded equitable practices for students in all grades.

Justin Tanner, Associate Principal at Heritage High School, said the interest in supporting ninth graders initially came about because there was a “disparity” between how the high schools within the school district were performing. Heritage High School has the highest rate of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches in the district, he said, and it also has the lowest graduation rate.

“The biggest thing came down to trying to eliminate those predictive outcomes based off of stuff that kids can’t control,” Tanner said. “Mixed and uneven results are not something that you can look at and feel good about as a system.”

Enabling school districts to make those system-wide improvements is one of the goals of the Center for High School Success (CHSS), a national project of the education advocacy organization Stand for Children.

“We want to help [schools] transition from the ways of doing — just doing all these things — to ways of being, where it’s a coordinated effort … so it doesn’t matter who’s necessarily leading the school or the teachers in place, but this is how we do it,” said Henterson Carlisle, Washington Director of CHSS.

With support from Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, CHSS works with school districts across Washington to increase the number of ninth grade students who finish their first year of high school on track to graduate in 4 years. Students are considered “on track” when they pass all their classes in ninth grade.

In the final story of a two-part series, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is looking at how Evergreen Public Schools is working to increase their ninth grade success rates. (Read the first story here.)

Evergreen Public Schools

• Location: Vancouver
• Enrollment (2021–22): 22,924
• Graduation rate (Class of 2021): 93%
• Ninth grade on-track rate (2020–21): 67%

Heritage High School had a graduation rate of 87% for the Class of 2021 and a ninth grade on-track rate of 50.6% during the 2020–21 school year, coming in below the school district’s overall rates. Tanner said that there are opportunity gaps within those numbers as well.

While students who are Hispanic/Latino comprise approximately a third of the high school’s population, their ninth grade on-track rate was 39.4% in the 2020–21 school year.

“Putting that information in front of teachers and having them be confronted with an outcome of what is happening within our classrooms has been something that has been a bit sobering,” Tanner said.

To support students and close opportunity gaps, the Ninth Grade Success Team at Heritage High School takes an approach similar to a case study. The team discusses and provides interventions for individual students who are facing challenges that many other students face.

“How these students are doing in our classes are identifying patterns that are existing within all of our classes and bringing to light things that we’re doing as adults,” Tanner said. This allows “us, as the teachers and school adults, to analyze our practices a little bit more.”

Once the team has identified the students who could most benefit from supports, a transition coach or graduation coach will often work with them on passing classes they may be failing, getting organized, finding transportation to school, and feeling connected to adults at school.

Emily Perez, a counselor at Heritage High School, said the counselors on the Ninth Grade Success Team can contribute important information about a student’s home life.

Counselors can give “a little bit of extra information of what the student might be struggling with that other people might not know about,” Perez said.

Educators and staff are also working to incorporate equity-based practices outside of the context of the Ninth Grade Success Team. Some of the changes they’ve made include more culturally responsive hiring practices and a shift to a set of common grading practices to help reduce classroom confusion.

And for the past 3 years, the school district’s professional development has focused on building learning partnerships with students and removing inequalities. As a result, all teachers are better able to support all students.

“Especially with the teachers on our team, they have this work embedded in them, so they’re able to spearhead this work in their own classrooms and share the information with other teachers,” Perez said.

For her part, Perez starts working with students on their High School and Beyond Plan when they’re in ninth grade. She makes sure students understand what a grade point average (GPA) is and how it works, as well as informs them of all the pathways they can explore after graduating.

“Our goal is to see students succeed, in whatever success looks like for that student,” Perez said. “What does success look like for this kid and how can we help them get there?”

Tanner emphasized the significance of ninth grade as a transitional year, and said he hopes to one day see something like Ninth Grade Success Teams in all high schools.

“Educators recognize that there are shortcomings in the system, and we want to do all we can to change it,” Tanner said. “There’s a lot that can be done.”

This story was written by Chelsea Embree, Communications Strategist at OSPI. You can contact the Communications Team at commteam@k12.wa.us.