Navigating into, through, and beyond the middle grades: The role of middle grades attendance in staying on track for high school graduation

Re‐envisioning the purpose of early warning systems: Shifting the mindset from student identification to meaningful prediction and intervention

“…further exacerbate the academic struggles a student experiences, which eventually results in a student dropping out of school. Finn's second theory, Participation‐Identification Theory (Finn, ), is widely seen as the foundation for student engagement theory and also is cited by several studies (Balfanz et al ., ; Barry & Reschly, ; Kieffer et al ., ). In this second theory, Finn argues the lack of participation in school activities first leads to academic struggles, which, in turn, leads to a lack of identification with the school causing a student's disengagement.…”

“…Therefore, schools must pay particular attention to actions and behaviours exhibited during the middle school grades, prior to the ninth grade transition (Balfanz et al ., ; Bowers, ; MacIver & Messel, ). Some researchers have even argued for an earlier examination of off‐track status, such as when students are in fourth grade (Kieffer et al ., ). Policymakers have used these arguments as an impetus for expanding the use of EWS at elementary grade levels even as young as kindergarten (e.g.…”

“…For example, students with three flagged indicators were almost three times as likely to drop out as those with one (Suh & Suh, ). Additionally, a weighted average of six indicators was significantly more predictive than any individual or combination of five variables (Kieffer et al ., ). Combining indicators across domains into a single indicator greatly enhances the predictive power of EWS (Balfanz et al ., ) and eases the burden of monitoring multiple early warning data points.…”

“…While key definitions for graduation, dropout and non‐graduation vary slightly from study to study, the decision to stay in school or leave before graduation appears to be a binary decision, defined as such in most literature. On‐time graduation is generally defined as a student earning a standard diploma four years after they first enroll as a ninth grader (Allensworth & Easton, ; Hartman et al ., ; Kieffer et al ., ; Norbury et al ., ). Differential paths to graduation are also accounted for, such as students who earn a General Education Diploma (GED) through an adult education facility, a special diploma (a diploma option given to students with disabilities who are not able to meet the requirements for a standard diploma), vocational certification, or eventual graduation (beyond the traditional 4 years).…”

“…The success of an EWS is predicated on the idea that student‐level behaviours and actions exhibited early in an academic career may ultimately lead to the decision to drop out and that these behaviours and actions can be used to identify those students at risk. Students who drop out often experience crisis points earlier in their academic career (Neild et al ., ) forming negative developmental pathways and trajectories that begin well before grade 9 (Kieffer et al ., ) and which may ultimately cause a student to drop out of school. This premise holds dropout to be the final, culminating act of educational disengagement that begins long before a student ultimately decides to drop out.…”