Course grades as actionable early warning indicators: predicting high school graduation in an urban school district

Abstract

Using administrative data from an urban school district, two series of predictive models were tested for their ability to project a student’s high school graduation status. The models included student grades, attendance, behavior, demographic predictors, and school-level variables. Eighth and ninth-grade variables were tested for two graduation cohorts (n = 2773) and multilevel logistic regression analyses were conducted to analyze the data. Most early warning indicator (EWI) models include end-of-course grades as predictors. This study operationalizes course failure as having failed a single marking period in the eighth grade or having failed a single semester in the ninth grade. Findings offer practitioners an actionable course grades based EWI, allowing for intervention after a single marking period of failure.

Keywords:

• Dropout
• early warning indicators
• grades
• graduation
• high school
• logistic regression modeling

Acknowledgments

I owe a debt of gratitude to the school district with which I collaborated for this work. In order to protect their identity, I will not name specific individuals here, but I am greatly appreciative of everyone with whom I interacted at the district. I am also grateful for the insights of Jim McMillan, Michael Broda, and Lisa Abrams at Virginia Commonwealth University, Michael Scott at the National Education Association, as well as Leanne Marshall at Auburn University. This work is much improved because of their feedback and insights throughout the research and writing processes.

Disclosure statement

There is no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David T. Marshall

David T. Marshall is an assistant professor at Auburn University. His current research interests include high school graduation outcomes, charter schools, and innovative approaches for preparing teachers. He is currently the chair of the Alabama Public Charter School Commission. Dr. Marshall previously taught middle and high school social studies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.