Embedded Files
USE THE COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY PROCESS
TO ENSURE YOUR FRESHMEN ARE & REMAIN ON-TRACK
USE THE COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY PROCESS
TO ENSURE YOUR FRESHMEN ARE & REMAIN ON-TRACK
Michael Fullan (2010) asserts, “collective capacity generates emotional commitment and technical expertise that no amount of individual capacity working alone can come to match.“ Collective capacity can be built and nurtured through effective teams.
IMPACT TEAMS
Impact Teams is a strengths-based teaming model committed to advancing the agency of every learner in the system (students, families, and educators). These high-performance teams have a healthy learning network, solid teaming structures, and purposeful protocols, which promote a school culture where educators and students are partners in learning.
The Impact Team architecture ensures teams achieve their shared purpose by nurturing relational trust, communicating openly, and operating within organizational structures and processes that work (Bloomberg & Pitchford, 2022). Since Impact Teams are united through a shared purpose, they may be formed around:
a grade level (i.e. 1st, 7th, 11th, etc.)
a course (i.e. U.S. History, Physics, P.E., etc.),
a department (i.e. counseling, special education, language arts, math, etc.),
a specific pedagogical practice (i.e.- self & peer assessment, student discourse, questioning),
a school goal or aim (i.e.- freshman on track, improved attendance, decreased discipline,
increased performance of marginalized population, etc.).
Regardless of how they are formed, Impact Teams use collaborative inquiry to understand their impact on student learning and to scale up their collective expertise.
Program Contact: Jennifer Teeter
jennifer.teeter@imesd.k12.or.us
541-966-4663
COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY
COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY
WHAT: Collaborative inquiry is a structured, team-based process to investigate and improve school systems, procedures, pedagogical practices, and student learning. In a school setting, collaborative inquiry involves teachers, administrators, and other educational staff working together to identify a specific area for improvement, examine data, and implement strategies to enhance student outcomes. This process is grounded in ideation and reflection, which help team members build shared knowledge, challenge assumptions, and refine their practices based on evidence.
WHY: Collaborative inquiry is effective because it fosters a culture of collective efficacy and agency through shared learning experiences and collective responsibility. When teams can engage in open dialogue, examine evidence (data) together, and identify areas for improvement, it builds trust and strengthens relationships among team members, which leads to a more cohesive school community. Ultimately, it enhances student outcomes by ensuring educators are aligned and equipped to address students’ diverse learning needs.
HOW: Steps for Collaborative Inquiry
Empathize: Do we know our students?
Who’s voices are not being heard? Who/what needs attention? Research and understand the needs of your students. What is lacking?
Synthesize the insights from the evidence to capture the core issues/needs connected to F.O.T
Define a Puzzle of Practice (P.O.P)
Create baseline statements using your school data snapshot/evidence
Articulate a puzzle of practice you want to solve.
With regard to the experience of belonging and equitable experiences and outcomes, what are the signs of hope (assets) currently exist?
Ideate Solutions for Change
Create ideas and challenge assumptions to strengthen support.
If there were no barriers and no limits what would you imagine school to look like? Imagine the possibilities.
What models currently exist that you can strengthen?
Design a theory of action and a plan to test and collect evidence
Transform your ideas into tangible solutions.
Articulate a realistic theory of action connected to solving the puzzle of practice.
Determine what expertise already resides in the school community.
How will we know our impact? What types of evidence should be collected to tell you what to continue, stop, or refine?
Action- Prioritize steps to take first.
Determine action steps the team can take to support their theory of action and inquiry. Co-construct a timeline for implementation.
Discuss next steps for learning (TCC options)
FRESHMAN ON-TRACK
FRESHMAN ON-TRACK
Freshman On-Track is a metric, originally developed by the University of Chicago, to predict high school graduation success. The University Consortium considers students “on-track” if they earn at least five full-year course credits and no more than one semester F in a core course during their 9th-grade year. Research revealed that “students who are on-track are three-and-a-half times more likely to graduate than those who are off-track” (Allensworth and Easton, 2005).
Emily Krone Phillips, the author of The Make-Or-Break Year, reports that Freshmen On-Track is more predictive of graduation than any other background characteristics, including test scores, socioeconomics, race, and the neighborhood within which a student resides. To this end, the 9th grade year is referred to by researchers as the “make-or-break year” (Phillips, 2019).
By tracking and monitoring the success of 9th graders, schools can provide early intervention and targeted support to students in danger of falling off track. Such support and intervention increase a student’s likelihood of graduating high school (Allensworth and Easton, 2005; Phillips, 2019).
The success story of Chicago Public Schools best exemplifies this. Under Arne Duncan’s superintendency from 2001-2009, Freshman On-Track was put on the district’s accountability framework. As a result, schools formed collaborative teams to track the progress of their 9th graders. These teams met periodically to analyze data related to being on track (grades, attendance, discipline, participation in extra-curricular activities, etc.) and to determine responsive action. Not only did they remedy the root cause(s) of the struggle for ninth graders off track or almost off track, but they also created ways to sustain the successes other freshmen were experiencing.
The Chicago Public School District witnessed remarkable growth with their freshman on track and graduation rates. Emily Krone Phillips reported in an interview with Frederick Hess,
“Freshman On-Track rates have increased in the district from 65 percent in the 2008-09 school year to 89 percent in the 2017-18 school year. Graduation rates have risen apace, reaching an all-time high of 76 percent in 2018. For many years in CPS, students were as likely to drop out as to graduate. Now they are three times more likely to graduate” (Education Next, 2019).
Such growth was only possible because school-based teams achieved their shared purpose by meeting regularly, utilizing protocols and processes to analyze data, and relying on research, success studies, and their professional expertise to determine next steps.
2025-2026 Team Stories
2025-2026 Team Stories
Several of you began by strengthening the architecture of the team itself, recognizing that effective Freshman On Track work depends on how adults collaborate.
Pendleton
Pendleton
At Pendleton High School, the team focused first on relationships and teaming practices among adults. By committing to a shared purpose of keeping freshmen on track, implementing strong meeting structures, protecting meeting time, following an agenda, sharing facilitation roles, and consistently using processes rooted in Evidence, Analysis, and Action, the team turned data into disciplined collaborative practice. As a result, by the end of the first semester, the percentage of freshmen on track increased by three percentage points, and the percentage of freshmen with more than one F decreased by half compared to the previous school year.
Pendleton FOT Overview.pdfWeston McEwen High School FOT Presentation.pdfWeston-McEwen
Weston-McEwen
While Weston McEwen’s historical data showed consistently strong FOT performance, their 2024 to 2025 SEED Survey data surfaced a different concern: ninth graders reported feeling disconnected from school. The team framed its inquiry around belonging and designed new structures to help students experience early connection. They adjusted the first day schedule to create an orientation experience exclusively for ninth graders, with Link Leaders welcoming, supporting, and guiding students so that the transition into high school felt more personal, navigable, and student centered. Following this change, the percentage of students who reported feeling prepared for high school increased by 29 points, from approximately 29 percent before orientation to 58 percent after, and 74 percent of freshmen reported feeling more comfortable navigating the school.
La Grande
La Grande
At La Grande High School, the FOT team used data and voice to identify a pattern of students already falling off track and then designed a collaborative inquiry around targeted adult support. They built a structured mentoring architecture in which students who were failing were paired with teacher mentors who met with them weekly to plan for success, monitor progress, and create concrete recovery plans when setbacks occurred. This intentional adult to student mentoring structure not only clarified expectations and supports, it also signaled to students that they were known, noticed, and not alone. La Grande’s Freshman On Track rate after the first semester rose to 88 percent, up from 60 percent the previous year.
Ione FOT Video.mp4Ione
Ione
At Ione the team framed its inquiry around student ownership, asking how freshmen could more actively understand, monitor, and influence their own on track status. Their solution was a portfolio structure through which students regularly track their GPA, coursework, activities, and goals, using FOT data as a mirror and a guide rather than just a label. These portfolios created recurring opportunities for reflection and conversation about progress, choices, and next steps, helping students see clear connections between their daily effort, their course performance, and their long term path to graduation. By the end of the year, the freshman class had earned all of their collective attempted credits except for 0.5, a powerful testament to what happens when students are engaged as co owners of their learning
Irrigon
Irrigon
At Irrigon, the FOT team used historical Freshman On Track data to examine course patterns and discovered that English Language Arts had the highest and most persistent failure rates for freshmen and sophomores. Their collaborative inquiry asked how writing expectations and supports were communicated and reinforced across classes and grade levels. In response, staff launched a literacy initiative centered on vertically and horizontally aligned rubrics and consistent expectations for complete sentence writing and sentence structure in every content area. By building common language, tools, and routines around writing across the learning network, they aimed to reduce barriers in English, strengthen literacy skills in all courses, and give more freshmen a fair chance to pass the classes that mattered most for staying on track.
Elgin
Elgin
At Elgin High School, the team’s inquiry centered on communication with families, recognizing that attendance, course performance, and family engagement are deeply intertwined. A parent survey at the start of the school year revealed that only 31.6 percent of parents agreed or strongly agreed that the school kept them well informed about their child’s academics, and just 36.9 percent felt well informed about scheduled school events. Seeing limited family communication as a likely contributor to poor attendance and performance, the team used its FOT architecture to select and implement a system level solution: ParentSquare, a communication platform that sends texts and emails about attendance, events, and grades and offers families an easy way to interact with staff. Following a third quarter rollout, 86.7 percent of parent responses rated the platform’s accessibility as “good” or “very good,” 66.7 percent agreed or strongly agreed that communication from the school, teachers, administration, and clubs had increased, and ParentSquare was leveraged to ensure that any student earning a D or F attended after school Homework Club until missing or incomplete assignments were remediated, helping shrink the schoolwide D and F list from three pages to one.
Baker
Baker
At Baker, the Freshman On Track team’s inquiry emerged from grade and course data showing that ninth graders were earning a disproportionate share of F grades. Student voice data revealed that inconsistent grading, late work, and retake policies across core classes left freshmen confused about expectations. The team used their FOT meeting structures and Evidence, Analysis, and Action process to design and pilot a streamlined set of common policies for late work and assessment retakes in the core, then clearly communicated these expectations to students and families and embedded them in syllabi, classroom signage, and the course catalog. This coherence reduced confusion, increased students’ sense of predictability and control, and contributed to a decline in ninth graders’ share of all F grades from 58 percent in semester 1 to 34 percent by quarter 3.
Baker FOT Presentation.pdfResources for Current Teams
Resources for Current Teams
Page updated
Report abuse