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Redford Union administrators present failure rates, expand tutoring and mentoring programs
Summary
Redford Union High School and junior-high administrators reported semester failure rates and described an expanded set of interventions'coaching, co-taught classes, group Varsity tutoring, high-dose sessions and a grit-team mentoring program'aimed at improving credit recovery and reducing repeat summer-school needs.
Redford Union High School and Redford Union Junior High administrators presented semester-by-semester course-failure data and described a multi-pronged plan to reduce failures and recover credits.
"As a district, social studies is our highest" for failure rates in grades 7'9, Ms. Sams said, reporting 7th-grade social-studies failure rates of 28.9% in first semester and 26.4% in second semester. Administrators said science and math rates varied by grade and teacher availability; for example, math failures rose where a math teacher took leave and a permanent substitute covered the class.
Administrators outlined responses already underway: the district assigned Chris Norton to coach the social-studies department, expanded Varsity on-demand tutoring from a single one-on-one section to group sessions to reach more students, increased co-taught sections in math, English, science and social studies, and will continue embedded credit-recovery and summer-school offerings. "All students that, did not pass math or English, were invited to summer school," Sams said, noting six students who attended summer school passed.
Taylor and Sams also described new mentoring and engagement work. A "grit team" pairs identified junior-high students with high-school mentors to meet periodically for social-emotional learning and mentoring; administrators hope the peer approach will increase engagement. Administrators emphasized attendance as a major driver of failures and said PBIS attendance initiatives, house-point recognition, and postcards home are part of their strategy.
Credit recovery results were presented as a measure of impact: administrators reported recovering a large share of lost credits in world history and other courses through interventions and summer school; Taylor said some non-graduates returned as fifth-year seniors and others earned credits in summer sessions and will graduate. He noted the district had 54 students categorized as chronically absent the previous year and that chronic absenteeism correlates strongly with course failure.
Why it matters
The presentation links course-failure patterns to staffing, attendance and prior learning gaps and outlines concrete interventions the district is deploying. Administrators stressed a shift from one-on-one tutoring toward grouped, targeted high-dose tutoring to maximize limited tutoring licenses and personnel time.
Provenance (selected transcript excerpts)
- Topic intro: Start of RUHS/RUJH secondary failures presentation (tc 00:10:20). - Topic finish: Q&A and wrap-up of secondary presentation and transition to elementary class size discussion (tc 00:45:10).
