To keep high school students on track, there’s no time like the beginning

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Dozier, an assistant principal at Harper High School in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood, took a big risk. She hung a giant board in the main hallway showing each ninth-grader’s academic progress under three headings: green for on-track, yellow for close to on-track and red for off-track.

That was a violation of Chicago school board policy. Many educators and parents would have been aghast to see students publicly labeled like that...