The Make-or-break Year

(Hardback)

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A Washington Post Bestseller

An entirely fresh approach to ending the high school dropout crisis is revealed in this groundbreaking chronicle of unprecedented transformation in a city notorious for its "failing schools"

In eighth grade, Eric thought he was going places. But by his second semester of freshman year at Hancock High, his D's in Environmental Science and French, plus an F in Mr. Castillo's Honors Algebra class, might have suggested otherwise. Research shows that students with more than one semester F during their freshman year are very unlikely to graduate. If Eric had attended Hancockor any number of Chicago's public high schoolsjust a decade earlier, chances are good he would have dropped out. Instead, Hancock's new way of responding to failing grades, missed homework, and other red flags made it possible for Eric to get back on track.

The Make-or-Break Year is the largely untold story of how a simple ideathat reorganizing schools to get students through the treacherous transitions of freshman year greatly increases the odds of those students graduatingchanged the course of two Chicago high schools, an entire school system, and thousands of lives. Marshaling groundbreaking research on the teenage brain, peer relationships, and academic performance, journalist turned communications expert Emily Krone Phillips details the emergence of Freshman OnTrack, a program-cum-movement that is translating knowledge into actionand revolutionizing how teachers grade, mete out discipline, and provide social, emotional, and academic support to their students.

This vivid description of real change in a faulty system will captivate anyone who cares about improving our nation's schools; it will inspire educators and families to reimagine their relationships with students like Eric, and others whose stories affirm the pivotal nature of ninth grade for all young people. In a moment of relentless focus on what doesn't work in education and the public sphere, Phillips's dramatic account examines what does.

Reviews

Praise for The Make-or-Break Year:
A remarkable book.
Washington Post

A revealing and honest look at an intervention that's making a difference.
Booklist

Phillips makes it clear that changing outcomes is reason enough to keep the [Freshman OnTrack] program aliveand to see it replicated elsewhere. A good case, if one largely of interest to educational policymakers and activists.
Kirkus Reviews

A remarkable, even astonishing book. Detailed and compelling. . . . How a book about educational philosophy can also be a page-turner, I don't know, but that's what Krone Phillips has given us. Every educator in America needs to read The Make-or-Break Yearnow.
Amy Ellis Nutt, Pulitzer Prizewinning writer and co-author of The Teenage Brain

In ninth grade, nothing matters more than belonging. With profound respect for both youth and their educators, this superb book sets out all the factors that make school a place where freshmen feel they belong.
Kathleen Cushman, author of Fires in the Bathroom

I highly recommend this book for educators who seek to do more to advance equity and increase student success.
Pedro Noguera, director of the Center for the Transformation of Schools at UCLA

A decisive, urgent case for intervening in the ninth grade . . . clear-eyed and hopeful, this book is required reading for anybody interested in addressing the dropout crisis.
Michelle Kuo, author of Reading with Patrick

Refreshing and expertly reported . . . essential reading for anyone who cares about student success. It will profoundly change the way we see high school in America.
Peg Tyre, author of The Trouble with Boys

Author Bio

Emily Krone Phillips is the communications director at the Spencer Foundation. She worked previously as an educator reporter and as the communications director at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, where the Freshman OnTrack research originated and inspired her to write The Make-or-Break Year (The New Press). She lives in Chicago.