Ninth Grade for Students At Risk for Dropping Out of High School

218 The first year of high school, usually the ninth grade, appears to be a critical point in the school career of students. Studies of dropouts reveal that students who leave high school prematurely have had a troubled school history (Wehlage, 1986), which has usually included ninth-grade failure (Zigmond and Thornton, 1985). Faced with increasing public pressure to do something about a stubbornly persistent drop-out rate, school districts are now implementing drop-out prevention programs, many of which are targeted to the needs of ninth-graders. Unfortunately, there are few studies of ninth-graders or the ninth-grade experience to provide administrators with an empirical basis for program development. The current study was undertaken to obtain a picture of the school experience of ninth-graders, to account for the phenomenon of ninth-grade failure and its relationship to the drop-out problem, and to determine whether there was anything about the organization or structure of the study school that was geared particularly to ninth-graders, or that addressed the difficulties that these students reportedly experience.