“I’m glad we already got friends,” said Shana Richards, the counselor at A&T Four Middle College, grinning as she peeked into a freshman homeroom on a Thursday in early August.
Inside, a dozen teenagers in fresh braids, sneakers, and polo shirts talked in clusters as the morning light blasted through the windows of Hodgin Hall. The new school year at the all-boys high school on North Carolina A&T State University’s campus had just begun.
The public magnet school draws boys from all over Guilford County to the celebrated historically Black university in Greensboro. Most high school students don’t know each other before enrolling, but many of this year’s incoming class attended a 10-day summer program Richards designed to ease the transition from middle school.
The students’ quiet conversations seemed like a sign that the program, called “Welcome to the Brotherhood,” helped with what can be one of the rockiest—and most consequential—academic adjustments.
North Carolina ninth graders fail to fulfill the requirements to advance to 10th grade at one of the highest rates in the country, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights by Big Local News at Stanford University in partnership with The Hechinger Report and The Assembly.
In the 2021-22 school year—the most recent for which federal data is available—more than 1 in 10 ninth graders here had to repeat or make up a portion of the year’s schoolwork to advance under their district’s rules. That’s more than double the national rate.
State Department of Public Instruction officials who reviewed the analysis cautioned against reading too much into data from a school year still suffering the pandemic’s effects. By their calculations, ninth-grade retention rates fell to 8.1% in 2024-25.
DPI’s retention rates differ slightly from what Big Local News calculated using federal data, in part because DPI calculates enrollment at a different time of the year. The feds use October 1 numbers; DPI tallies enrollment at the end of the ninth month of the school year.
While the gap between North Carolina and the national rate grew during the pandemic, our ninth-grade retention rate was above the national rate well before 2020—at least 2.7 points higher every year since 2011-12 that federal data was available. (The federal data is typically released every two years; the most recent release is now eight months late.)
DPI says the analysis reflects “a real early-high school pattern” but that it would be a mistake to view the rates in wholly negative terms. “We are holding students to the standards and expectations for their progression,” Chief Accountability Officer Michael Maher said through a spokesperson.
But because holding students back is “highly associated with dropouts,” the ninth-grade figures warrant some concern, said Sarah Crittenden Fuller, a research associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who included retention rates in an examination of the pandemic’s effect on North Carolina students. “It generally would be better to provide additional support while also promoting students.”
Some recent studies suggest early elementary school students may see some benefits, at least in the short term, if retention is paired with high-intensity tutoring and support. But there is less evidence in favor of retaining older students and more proof of harm, as The Hechinger Report, in partnership with Big Local News and The Assembly, recently reported.
Schools in the South tend to hold back students at higher rates than in other regions; they also tend to spend less per pupil than the national average. In the most recent ranking by the Education Law Center, only Idaho spent less than North Carolina. The state’s relatively high level of school segregation and local control also appear to contribute to North Carolina retaining a higher share of its students than all but three other states.
Richards has observed the negative effects firsthand over 19 years as a school counselor. Retention “can cause a student a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, and it can also cause some students to not return to school because their self-esteem takes a hit,” she said. Over her career, she has watched support for struggling students dwindle.
But A&T Four puts an unusual amount of care into ensuring that students begin high school on sure footing. Richards meets them while they are still in middle school to talk about their dreams and anxieties.
The intensive summer program is designed to build relationships, set expectations, and instill strong study skills. Students also meet their future English and math teachers.
“When they come in for that first day of school, they already feel like, ‘This is my school. I’m connected to it. I know somebody here,’” Richards said. “And it’s not such an overwhelming experience.”
The school also offers a bridge course in their first semester to bolster math foundations, and Richards checks in with all the freshmen within the first month.
“If students are going to have some challenges in a class or a year of transition,” she said, “it is that ninth-grade year.” On the flip side, research suggests that if students end freshman year on track, they are three times as likely to graduate.
A Patchwork of Policies
In North Carolina, the triggers for retaining a student vary by grade, district, and sometimes even school.
In kindergarten through third grade, the state’s 2012 literacy law comes into play. The law bars third graders from advancing unless they attain certain reading scores on a standardized test. But it has several exceptions, including for students who are learning English, have disabilities, can demonstrate proficiency through another method, or have already been held back once. District superintendents decide whether those exceptions should apply.
Principals have the decision-making authority over all other retentions. State law says they must consider factors beyond standardized tests, including the student’s classroom work and “best educational interests.”
“If students are going to have some challenges in a class or a year of transition, it is that ninth-grade year.”
Shana Richards, counselor at A&T Four Middle College
In middle and high school, local districts determine the promotion criteria, though their rules must fit within parameters set by the State Board of Education and 2023 laws that require career development plans and standardized graduation credit requirements.
In general, the district policies specify how many credits a student must earn each year—usually between four and six for freshmen. Guilford County Schools requires five.
Some districts require students to pass particular classes in or by a certain grade. Some, like Moore County, have minimum attendance requirements. At least one—Northampton—mandates community service. Many policies also describe avenues for parents to appeal a retention.
All districts are required to provide reading camps for struggling second and third graders, programs for at-risk students, and a way for high schoolers to recover class credit without retaking a whole course. Some policies describe those offerings in great detail, while others are vague.
In 2023-24, the most recent year for which the state has published district-level data, 2.5% of students were retained across all grades. Local rates and patterns vary widely.
In most districts, retentions were concentrated in high school, with ninth graders failing to meet the promotion standards most often. Across the state, 1 in 10 ninth graders were held back. Five districts, including Durham, retained 1 in 5.
Others held back more students in early elementary school. Columbus County held back 1 in 4 third graders. Northampton held back about 1 in 10 students in kindergarten, first, and second grades.
Very few students across the state were retained in middle school. Nash held back more than most: 3% of sixth graders, 6% of seventh graders, and 5% of eighth graders.
‘A Resource Story Behind All of It’
Black, Hispanic, and Native American students in North Carolina were about twice as likely to be held back as the state’s white students, and boys were 38% more likely than girls, Big Local News found. Black boys were retained at the highest rates of all.
Researchers say disparities in discipline likely contribute. Across the state in 2023-24, about 7 in 10 short-term suspensions, long-term suspensions, and expulsions impacted boys.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights completed an extensive analysis of discipline disparities in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in 2023, finding that Black students received out-of-school suspensions at three to four times the rate of white students. Black and white students with similar discipline histories engaging in similar behaviors were treated differently, owing to significant discretion within the discipline policy. Black students were more likely to receive out-of-school suspensions for first-time offenses, especially for use of inappropriate language, disrespect, and “aggressive behavior.”
“If you experience exclusionary discipline—where you’re suspended, or you’re otherwise removed from the classroom—that’s going to put you behind,” said Constance Lindsay, an associate professor in the School of Education at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Some educators note that boys also tend to mature later and are more prone to getting into physical fights. Other possible contributors to the gender gap, Lindsay said, are the rise of certain diagnoses that affect boys more than girls and the dearth of male teachers.
Lindsay’s research has found that having same-race teachers is associated with lower rates of exclusionary discipline for Black students, particularly office referrals for “willful defiance” across all grade levels. In another study, Lindsay and her collaborators found that having at least one Black teacher in grades 3-5 reduced the probability that a low-income, Black male student will drop out of high school by 39%. Most teachers are white women. A 2024 report from UNC-Chapel Hill found 16% of the state’s teaching workforce was male in 2022-23, and 16% was Black.
Researchers also point to the fact that segregation is increasing, and effective teachers are unevenly distributed even within districts.
Emma Marshall, a research analyst for Carolina Demography, found in a 2023 analysis that school quality explains much of the racial gap in retention.
“If you experience exclusionary discipline—where you’re suspended, or you’re otherwise removed from the classroom—that’s going to put you behind.”
Constance Lindsay, associate professor in the School of Education at UNC-Chapel Hill
The districts reporting the highest retention rates in recent years are concentrated in eastern and northeastern North Carolina—rural counties with large Black populations and high poverty rates. In part because they can’t match nearby urban districts’ teacher pay, these districts have a hard time recruiting and retaining quality educators.
“As a teacher straight out of college, why would I go to Bertie County?” asked Leroy Wray, the president of the North Carolina Parent Teacher Association. It was a question Wray said he posed repeatedly while serving on former Gov. Roy Cooper’s task force aimed at diversifying teachers. It’s also not just about pay, he said. “In Wake or Mecklenburg, you have entertainment,” Wray said. “You have things to do.”
Some districts have had so much trouble recruiting that they have turned to bringing in teachers from abroad. In Halifax County, 7 in 10 teachers were from countries other than the U.S. last year, the Border Belt Independent reported.
Across the state, Black, economically disadvantaged students are more likely than white, affluent students to be taught by first-year teachers and less likely to be taught by teachers with National Board certification or high effectiveness scores, other recent studies show. The gap has worsened post-pandemic.
“There’s a resource story behind all of it,” UNC-CH’s Fuller said, which extends to counselors and other specialists who could help struggling students.
‘You Put Him in the Wrong Grade’
Parents and caregivers have mixed reactions to the prospect of their child being held back. Some of that is tied to questions about resources.
When Angela Garrett heard in spring 2025 that her eldest grandson’s teacher was recommending he repeat kindergarten, she thought it was probably a good idea. Jordan’s autism and ADHD made it difficult for him to sit still and participate in class, and he performed below grade level on assessments.
But when she reviewed the logs she had requested from Jordan’s general education teacher at Nash County’s Bailey Elementary, she noticed that Jordan had not received all the services of his Individualized Education Plan, a legally binding document. The special education teacher who was supposed to pull Jordan out of class twice a day for individualized help blamed most of the missed sessions on meetings, Garrett said.
In her view, the school did not sufficiently support the teacher, which resulted in Jordan not getting the support he needed to move on to the next grade.
Garrett pressed the school to fulfill his IEP and demanded more documentation. “I held up a protest sign in front of the school while they were ignoring me and not giving me my records,” she said. “They threatened to arrest me.”
Garrett suspects that the principal ultimately promoted Jordan to first grade to appease her and avoid giving Jordan all the services he missed. “They told me that he had picked up the scores at the end of the year, and he should be good to go,” she said. “But as soon as I got the first progress report, I knew it was a lie.”
She tried to get him put back in kindergarten: “I kept telling them, ‘You have put him in the wrong grade. He’s in the wrong grade. You did this to placate me.’ … But they kept saying, ‘Oh, we’re gonna try this co-teaching strategy this year, and we’re gonna do this, and he’ll be fine.’”
“They told me that he had picked up the scores at the end of the year, and he should be good to go. But as soon as I got the first progress report, I knew it was a lie.”
Angela Garrett, Nash County grandmother
Jordan realized he wasn’t doing as well as the other kids, and his self-esteem sank, Garrett said. Then, the principal decided to have him repeat first grade, which Garrett fears will have more negative effects.
“I’ve heard him mention his friends a couple times over the summer,” she said. “He forgot and said, ‘I can’t wait to go to the second grade to be with my friends,’ and I said, ‘Jordan, you’re going to be back in the first grade again.’”
Garrett’s distrust of the school system stems in part from her daughter’s experience. Jordan’s mother has an intellectual disability and mental illness, and as a student had been subjected to humiliation in front of the class. “The first time around, with my daughter, I trusted them,” she said. She regrets it.
Now Garrett, 56, is raising Jordan and his younger brother, Cayden, who has a more severe form of autism. She earned a degree in human services to help her daughter and sought specialized therapies early for her grandchildren.
She found yearslong waits for evaluation, high therapist turnover, and a reluctance from the district to allow private therapists in the schools, Garrett said. From the bathroom she uses as “her office,” she has lodged several complaints with DPI about the district.
“My health is not that great,” she said. “The whole point in all of this is to get them as much early intervention as I can because I’m not going to be here forever.”
Kristen Murphy moved from Hoke County to Cumberland to try to get more resources for her two adopted children, who have intellectual disabilities and come from extremely traumatic backgrounds in an orphanage in Kyrgyzstan.
“When they came to the U.S., not only were they primarily Russian-speaking, but they had no education at all,” Murphy said. “We were starting from zero.”
The school district enrolled her daughter in kindergarten and her son in first grade based on their age, Murphy said. “They have continued to push them through the system,” she said, even though, two and a half years later, they have preschool-level skills at age 10.
Murphy wondered if that was really best. Her understanding of where they were academically did not match what school officials were telling her.
“We are still working on letter, number, color recognition, sounds, but the school is telling me my son can read,” said Murphy, who homeschooled her three older children before sending them to private school. “The report cards were coming home with all A’s and B’s, all satisfactory, 95’s and 100’s, when he can’t complete anything on his own.”
She, too, doubts that her children are receiving all the services included in their IEPs. She said she has tried “countless times” to get service logs but has never received one. When their occupational therapist said they were making very slow progress, Murphy asked to increase their sessions to three per week, but educators on the IEP team denied that on the grounds that the children were still making progress. “I think they are very short-staffed, so I think that is part of the issue,” she said.
Without many tools to hold the school to the IEP, she asked for the children to be held back. The children were behind not only academically but socially, and they were small in physical stature. Murphy recalls the first meeting about the idea as “very shaming.” The teacher thought the children should be promoted, and the principal said you can only have one retention in all of elementary school, Murphy said.
“He did agree to sign off on them being retained for this coming year,” she said, “but it took three separate meetings.”
Both Garrett and Murphy shared their stories on social media and received a flood of responses from others with similar experiences.
Districts across the state have identified funding for students with disabilities as one of their biggest challenges. They receive $5,309 from the state for each student with disabilities, no matter how severe their impairment, and no district can receive those funds for more than 13% of its students.
If more students have a disability, the district has to find some other way to pay for the services. Of the state’s 115 districts, 102 exceeded the cap last school year. Big Local News’ analysis found that 19% of students who were retained in N.C. had disabilities.
Playing Catch Up
New Hanover County Schools Superintendent Christopher Barnes said parents request retention more often than students are actually held back.
“What you’re basically doing is trading in one year of their adult income for school, and you’ve got to think very carefully when you do that,” he said. Barnes considers retention “a last resort.”
One of the district’s major initiatives is boosting attendance, which remains below pre-pandemic levels. “We feel like a chronically absent kid is the first step to losing that kid,” he said. “They’re missing core instruction that then kind of snowballs on them later on.”
“The report cards were coming home with all A’s and B’s, all satisfactory, 95’s and 100’s, when he can’t complete anything on his own.”
Kristen Murphy, Cumberland County parent
In high school, where retention is primarily based on credit attainment, Barnes says the guiding question is how to make sure that kids are able to get back on track.
“When kids go from middle school to high school, the amount of self-direction that’s required increases substantially,” he said. Kids go “hog wild for a little bit.”
Earlier in his career, Barnes moved from serving as principal of Alleghany County’s K-8 school to its high school. “We had as many failed classes in a year as we had students in our building. … So my question was, ‘What the hell? How on earth did we have this?’”
He implemented “standards-based grading,” in which students had the opportunity to retest if they failed. “But instead of being every semester, it was an everyday kind of thing,” he said. “We cut our failure rate by 75% in a year.”
In New Hanover, the district’s testing director sends out monthly reports to principals and counselors that help identify students who will need to do online credit recovery or repeat a course. In June, three to four staff members are available at the traditional high schools to help students complete their online work, said Robin Hamilton, the district’s chief academic officer.
New Hanover also offers two programs to build strong student-teacher relationships, which research shows are closely tied to achievement, Hamilton said. One is aimed at students with IEPs, while another targets those who want to go to college but may need extra support.
“We’re really focused on making sure these children have those close connections with the adult so that they feel seen and they feel cared for, and they know that people believe in them, and they know that we’re here to help them be successful,” Hamilton said.
When the pandemic brought a flood of extra money into school systems nationwide, North Carolina invested some of it in another intervention: summer school.
More than 200,000 students attended summer school in 2021, including 35,000 high schoolers. Almost 86% of the high schoolers had failed at least one class, according to a report Fuller co-authored. The results were encouraging: Participants’ likelihood of being retained the following year was 16% lower than similar students.
The following two summers, some districts offered “bridge” programs aimed at transition years: kindergarten, sixth grade, and ninth grade. The participating students were less likely to be chronically absent the next year, UNC-CH researchers found, though those going into sixth or ninth grade were not significantly less likely to be retained the following year.
Administrators who completed a survey nonetheless identified the programs as “promising.” Students said they felt more prepared, and teachers felt more prepared to support the incoming class.
But the end of pandemic-recovery funds has led to summer school being stripped back. In summer 2025, just 13% of the state’s 35,664 retained students participated in summer school, according to DPI data.
Some summer programs run by outside organizations also help students to catch up, like Winston-Salem’s Freedom Schools. Organized by the Children’s Defense Fund and local partners, the schools are named for the 1964 Freedom Summer in Mississippi, when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee led programs to train Black activists.
At Freedom Schools, college students help mixed-age groups of mostly Black children in reading and improving their sense that they can effect change in the world. It is primarily funded through private donations and is free to students.
There were 47 sites in North Carolina this year, with the highest concentration in the Triad. School districts can refer students at risk of retention to them, with the goal of retesting at the end of the summer.
An internal assessment of Freedom School sites across 26 states in 2025 found that more than half of the participants improved their reading levels; instructional reading levels increased by eight months on average, they found.
At the Wake Forest University site this summer, a community partner brought in books to do a mini book fair. Three Black boys, rising ninth graders, were particularly delighted to get Harry Potter books, said Dani Parker Moore, a local Freedom School organizer and an associate professor in the School of Education. “I walked in on them saying, ‘Let’s set up a book club to talk about these books.’”
A Replicable Model?
Greensboro’s A&T Four Middle College was founded in 2003 specifically to make a dent in retention rates among Black and Hispanic boys, Principal Travis Seegars said.
The original 25 students were all at risk of dropping out, he said. Today, about one-third of the 160 students enrolled fall into that category. The vast majority of students attending A&T Four—named for the university students who set off the sit-in movement in 1960—are Black or Hispanic.
Beginning in their sophomore year, the school slowly introduces college classes to the students, Seegars said. They work up to taking three college classes and one high school class at a time, earning as many as 30 transferable credits. A poster above the front door bears the school’s creed: “I will go to college!”
Seegars’ office displays his degrees from A&T and historical photos of the campus alongside images of superheroes. On his shelves are elaborate Lego constructions, an oversized mechanical hand like Thanos’ gauntlet, and a blue lightsaber.
In his decade as the school’s principal, Seegars has helped usher all but one student to graduation. The exception, which was during the pandemic, still eats at him. “To this day, it’s one of those things, like, ‘Oh man, why can’t I pull that one kid back?’”
Part of the school’s magic is that it’s small; classes have about half as many students as is typical across the state. Students stay with their English and math teachers for two years to add stability. The principal is accessible. The relationship building is intentional. Seegars says he often fields calls about how to do it, but in an era of strained budgets, that model is hard to replicate. Districts all over North Carolina are closing or consolidating schools as enrollment falls.
It was difficult even for A&T Four. The first year Seegars and Richards wanted to try their summer transition program, they couldn’t find the funds.
Then, Richards got a grant from the NEA Foundation, and Seegars negotiated with the district to use some state-allocated money for innovative high school programs. “I’ve had to make a lot of adjustments and make additional requests to the district to release more of those funds to us,” Seegars said. There’s no guarantee it will continue.
Seegars credits the program with the school’s rising test scores. In the 2021-22 school year, 47% of the school’s kids in English 2 were proficient on end-of-course testing. In 2024-25, 55% were. Math 1 proficiency rose from 19% to 24% over the same period. Proficiency in biology went from 36% to 58%—10 points above the statewide figure.
“To do that with predominantly Black and Hispanic males, it’s still unheard of,” he said. “If I can get a student to be introduced two months before they start school with us to their English teacher along with their math teacher, that is powerful.”
Math teacher Eugene Grant is particularly skilled at bringing kids up to grade level, Seegars said. He was honored as the district’s teacher of the year in 2014 and coached other math teachers but then left the profession. He came back for a position at A&T Four, where many educators are also experienced and Black.
Despite the school’s successes, the district is starting to cut into its resources, Seegars said. They’ve lost two tutor positions and have fewer coaching days for teachers.
Guilford County Schools recently expanded transition programs at other high schools but opted for less resource-intensive models.
Many schools now share social workers, meaning that efforts to boost attendance are often fractured, and counselors are typically staffed at levels well below the 1:250 ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association, Richards said. In 2024-25, the statewide ratio was 1:360.
Richards said she was once assigned 480 students. “There was no way I was going to get to know all of those kids and their circumstances and who needed food and who just needed a pep talk every morning—just all of the things that go into ensuring that a child has a great experience within a school building.”
This story was produced in partnership with Big Local News at Stanford University and The Hechinger Report. Data analysis was conducted by Eric Sagara, senior data journalist with Big Local News.