How do you raise the high school graduation rate? Philly is betting a focus on ninth grade will help.

Brooklyn Jamison was a handful in her ninth-grade year at Mastbaum High School.

“I was fighting, getting into drama that I shouldn’t have,” she said. “I picked the wrong friend group, and I was not being a leader at all.”

Enter Amy Foster, Mastbaum’s assistant principal for ninth grade. Foster was tasked with keeping close tabs on every one of the school’s freshmen and motivating them to do their best — up to and including daily reports on their progress, texts with their families, and the kind of “you-can-do-it-I-expect-a-lot-out-of-you” talks that resulted in Foster jokingly referring to Jamison as one of her children: “Brooklyn Jamison Foster.”

That was a pivotal year for Jamison, now an 11th-grader at Mastbaum. These days, her grades are strong, her friends lift her up, she’s a member of the cheer and track teams, and she has plans to earn a college degree, become an English teacher, and sell real estate.

“She’s come so far,” said Kaitlin Junod, Jamison’s freshman English teacher and track coach.

Philadelphia School District leaders have long said they want to improve the system’s four-year graduation rate — currently at 81%. To do that, they are pouring resources into a “Ninth Grade Success Network,” a group of 24 schools that receive extra resources to focus closely on ninth-graders.

The research is clear. In Philadelphia, ninth-graders who are considered “on track” — those who earn at least one credit in English, math, science, and social studies, plus at least one more credit — have an 89% four-year graduation rate. Those who fail to hit that mark have a graduation rate of just 45%.

The gains are particularly pronounced for groups of students that have traditionally had lower graduation rates, including Black and Latino males.

Geneva Sloan, the district’s director of postsecondary readiness and ninth-grade point person, said boosting the graduation rate is about more than numbers.

“It helps us to repair our city, to have young people in careers and to have more postsecondary outcomes,” said Sloan.

Philadelphia’s ninth-grade focus has grown considerably since it adopted the “ninth-grade-on-track” metric in the 2017-18 school year.

In late 2023, the school board authorized a $2.6 million contract with the nonprofit Philadelphia Academies Inc. to support the work through 2027. (Those funds are more than $1 million from the Neubauer Family Foundation, which has supported Philadelphia’s ninth-grade work for several years.)

The Ninth Grade Success Network, equipped with significant assistance from Philadelphia Academies to monitor ninth-graders’ data, offers coaching at least once a week, plus technical support and professional development.

Schools have access to Philadelphia Academies staff to help ninth-grade teams think through attendance improvement plans and ways to build positive school culture, interventions for at-risk students, and strategies to reward strong performers.

The cohort is expected to grow to 32 district schools by 2026-27. Schools must apply to be part of the ninth-grade network and commit to having a dedicated ninth-grade assistant principal and regular common planning time for the ninth-grade team.

F. Christopher Goins, CEO of Philadelphia Academies, saw the significance of a ninth-grade focus firsthand, as a principal at a Chicago high school that employed strategies that came out of the University of Chicago’s “To and Through Project,” which is now key to the Philadelphia ninth-grade work.

Large, urban districts are strapped for cash, and the kind of ongoing professional development and support structures that ninth-grade network schools get are not something school systems can usually provide on a large scale.

But, Goins said, it’s how “a school should properly build and attract students.”

At Mastbaum, the ninth-grade work is making a real difference, said Principal David Lon. In 2023-24, 72% of ninth-graders were on track, up from 60% in 2022-23.

The school’s enrollment is up, too — 680 attend Mastbaum this year, a full 100 more than the district had projected — in part because a stronger first year means more are moving into 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.

Mastbaum is a career and technical education high school, with students exploring careers in ninth grade, then choosing a concentration in 10th. So more students have access to programs like carpentry, plumbing, and graphic design.

“We’re building enrollment from within,” Lon said. “We’re keeping kids in programs, and that’s because of ninth grade.”

The work is not easy, Foster said.

“Ninth-graders need a lot of support, a lot of patience,” Foster said — they’re teenagers, but still immature in many ways, and the transition to more rigorous academics and more independence can be challenging. Foster mixes genuine affection with firm expectations.

The Mastbaum ninth-grade team meets regularly, identifying at-risk students, and periodically holding “catch-up cafe,” time for students to sit with teachers to bring up grades, whether for general support or to make up work. Every one of the 240 freshmen is on the team’s radar.

Data is important, but relationships are more important, Foster said: recognizing students’ needs, their strengths and challenges, brainstorming ways to help them see growth — whether it’s attending school regularly, or moving to honors classes if she sees unrealized potential.

Every day, Foster reaches out to 50 families — texting or calling not just with bad news, but often about small victories.

“Support is the name of the game,” Foster said. “Sometimes, it’s, ‘I’m just letting you know that he went to all of his classes.’ Sometimes, that’s where it starts.”