New St. Mary's School Helps Students Navigate 9th Grade

Year-Long Academy Designed to Lift Graduation Rate

Teacher Rebecca Cline was walking her ninth-grade class through the intricacies of scientific notation when, in the back of the room, a student rested his head on his desk. Another instructor quickly stepped in to get him back on task, which was no surprise. Classes at the newly opened Fairlead Academy in St. Mary's County match two teachers with about 10 kids.

The 60 students enrolled at the public school this year were quiet underachievers in middle school. Although they didn't warrant placement in special education programs, they tended to score consistently lower than their peers on standardized tests. Their teachers worried that they might fall behind as freshmen and eventually drop out of school.

In St. Mary's, where nearly one-quarter of ninth-graders had to repeat at least one class last year, school officials this year have launched an unusual experiment: Fairlead, a one-year program aimed at increasing the school system's graduation rate by intensive mentoring and close instruction.

"We, like most school systems, are focusing on this much more than we have in the past," said Theo L. Cramer, the county's director of academic support. "It has been a problem for some time. We're finally doing something about it."

In years past, county residents who did not complete high school often found work as watermen or farmers. But those jobs are disappearing fast, and a high school diploma is becoming crucial for any type of employment.

At Fairlead, lesson plans revolve around real-life experiences, such as plotting data from cellphone bills to learn about graphing. Students are exposed to career ideas through guest speakers and monthly field trips.

Superintendent Michael J. Martirano said the idea for the program came from the Alexandria school system, which places all ninth-graders in a separate school for the crucial transition year between middle and high school. Martirano said he knew of no other school system in the region that has a school for selected at-risk ninth-graders.

St. Mary's officials said the county's latest graduation rate is nearly 88 percent, which is similar to those of other jurisdictions in Maryland's Washington suburbs. Even so, said Wendy Zimmerman, dean of the academy, "we're not going to accept average."

"We still have students dropping out," she said. "Rather than hide a problem, we said, 'What are we going to do?' "

But Maryland, like most other states, reports graduation rates by a method that, although accepted by the federal government, has been rejected by much of the academic community.

A national database compiled by the trade journal Education Week paints a different picture of Maryland's school systems. According to the database, St. Mary's had one of the lowest graduation rates in the state, 59.6 percent, for the Class of 2005, better only than the rates in Prince George's County and Baltimore. The state average in that year, the most recent available, was 73.6 percent. Calvert County's graduation rate was 86 percent, and Charles County's was 82.7 percent.

For several students at the academy, it has been years since they truly passed all their classes, Zimmerman said. Students are rarely held back in middle school, which can leave them unprepared for high school, she said. At the academy, class schedules are purely academic with 90-minute periods of Algebra, English, U.S. History and science. That means no gym, music, art or other electives.