Dan Genz, The Examiner
2008-04-11 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

One hundred Prince William County high school freshmen last year were already 18 by January 2007, creating a complicated challenge for school administrators educating students four years older than their average classmates.

Statewide, Virginia could fill a small high school with the more than 1,100 adults still considered ninth-graders, or 1 percent of the class.

Ninth grade is undeniably the toughest grade to finish, with about twice as many students failing each year as any other class in Virginia. Students often can struggle to pass ninth grade for multiple years before they advance or eventually drop out.

The jagged lurch into a new social stratosphere of high school, greater reliance on self-motivation, and the requirements to pass more challenging classes regardless of skill level are cited for the comparative difficulty of ninth grade.

Special education students and the jump in the number of foreign-speaking students in Prince William County also have contributed to the over-age issues, school officials said.

“All of the studies show that if kids are retained, even starting back in third grade, they have a much more likelihood of dropping out of school,” said Carolyn Hughes, a professor of special education and human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

“None of us wants to be 19 years old and in classes with 14-year-olds.”

New programs in Prince William County that focus on helping the teens beat the freshman hurdle aim to reduce the number of students repeating grades and the problems associated with over-age students.

An 18-year-old freshman in general education has “virtually no chance to graduate” said Timothy Healey, the principal of Osbourn Park High School near Manassas.

“If you can keep them with their peer group, keep them flowing, graduation is that much more likely,” he said. “We’ve seen ninth grade being a make-it or break-it year.”

Late last month, a freshman less than two months from his 19th birthday badly injured a 15-year-old peer in a fight at Stonewall Jackson High School near Manassas in Prince William County, raising the question of dangers involved with students of different ages in the same grades.

The school system’s officials declined to comment on the incident and the first-year principal, Richard Nichols, was not made available to discuss the issue at his campus and did not return two calls to the school Tuesday.

dgenz@dcexaminer.com