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A Philadelphia program focused on addressing the city’s student dropout crisis is expanding into four new district schools this year.
Philadelphia Academies Inc. — a longtime partner in dropout prevention efforts in the School District of Philadelphia — announced this month it is bringing its 9th Grade Success Network to Building 21, Franklin Learning Center, Philadelphia Military Academy, and Hill-Freedman World Academy for the 2025-26 school year.
The program focuses on schools that serve students from traditionally marginalized groups, particularly Black students, who have faced systemic challenges to persisting in their education, leading to higher dropout rates, research has shown.
School leaders and educators in the program get specialized professional training in adolescent development, relationship building, and intervention techniques. Ninth grade assistant principals also get regular coaching and assistance analyzing student data to ensure those most at risk of dropping out get the attention and support they need.
LaTrina Stewart, ninth grade assistant principal at Franklin Learning Center, will be participating for the first time this school year. She said she’s hoping her students feel “ultra supported” this year.
“I don’t want to have to dig a child out of a hole and I don’t want children to have to dig themselves out of a hole,” she said. “That safety net to catch them before they even get in the hole — that’s what the ninth grade academy provides for us.”
With this expansion, the 9th Grade Success Network will operate in 28 district schools, with a goal to reach 32 schools by next year, said Christopher Goins, the president and CEO of Philadelphia Academies Inc., or PAI. This is the first year the program will work in selective admissions schools like Franklin Learning Center and Hill-Freedman. The program is funded through 2027 with $2.6 million from the School District of Philadelphia and $8 million from the Neubauer Family Foundation.
Nadia Schafer, director of the 9th Grade Success Network at PAI, told Chalkbeat the program is expanding because it’s working.
The program served more than 4,500 students in the 2024-25 school year, according to Philadelphia Academies data. A ninth grade student is considered “on-track” to graduation by the district and PAI if they earn at least one credit in each of the core subjects English, math, science, and social studies, plus one additional credit in a subject of their choosing. Students who earn all As and Bs in their four core classes plus at least one additional class are considered “firmly on-track,” Schafer said.
For the students the program served last year, Latino boys and Black boys improved their “on-track” rates by 5 percentage points and 4.4 percentage points, respectively.
Thomas Murtaugh, ninth and 12th grade principal at the School of the Future, said his student on-track data “drastically improved” since being part of the program. The share of students on-track to graduation went up 27% in the second year of the program and has remained consistently high, he said.
District officials noticed too, Schafer said. In fact, district data shows the “on-track” strategy contributed to a 10.2 percentage point increase in the four-year graduation rate over the last seven years. Superintendent Tony Watlington has also reported the district’s dropout rate was down by more than a thousand students last school year, due in part, to the on-track program.
There’s evidence this approach is working in other large urban school districts. Philly’s strategy was built off of a blueprint initiated in Chicago, which has also reported all-time high graduation rates.
Ebony Hollingsworth-Lowery, ninth grade assistant principal at William Sayre High School is about to start her fourth year with the program, and she said it’s been a “roadmap for success.”
As a former athlete, Hollingsworth-Lowery said the leadership coaching and regular check-ins work for her because they form a kind of “playbook” to help keep her and her ninth grade team of counselors, community advocates, educators, school staff, and administrators all focused on the same goals.
“It forces you to really look at your students, your teachers, and what systems are in place to be able to be successful,” she said. The program instills a way to “know your students, know who they are, but also, most importantly, know their needs, because if we can’t meet their needs, they’re going to retract from school.”
But not every high school is equipped to take on the program, according to Schafer, and there’s a competitive application process for schools to be selected. Schools with lower graduation rates and lower on-track rates are given priority because “we think it’s important to spend our resources where they’re going to make the most difference,” Schafer said.
Schools must also have a ninth grade administrator and a ninth grade core team of educators dedicated to teaching solely ninth grade, “not someone who is teaching English 1, 2, 3, and 4,” Schafer said.
With the ongoing teacher shortage and funding constraints in the city, those requirements can be a challenge for schools. That’s why PAI opened applications to criteria-based schools for the first time.
“It’s tough when maybe it’s not quite time” for some of those neighborhood schools to join the program, Schafer said, but she said they are working with the district to get other neighborhood schools “ready to be able to take on this work in a future year.”
For Stewart, the resources that the success network provides, “should be a part of what high schools get without it being left up to what principals have in their budget,” she said.
But this year at least, she’s hopeful.
“We need this,” Stewart said.
Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.
