By Monica Brady-Myerov (WBUR)

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Traditionally, high schools bear the responsibility for preventing students from dropping out. But as early as third grade, educators can tell which kids are at risk.

Research shows that a student is poised for academic success or failure well before the legal dropout age of 16. Educators in many school districts are trying to figure out how to use that information to create more effective intervention programs.

In this installment in our series, “Project Dropout,” WBUR’s Monica Brady-Myerov reports on early signs of academic failure.

Educators know by third grade if a child is likely to graduate from high school on time. How? Reading.

JAMIE FROST: When they leave third grade there is a major shift from learning to read to reading to learn.

Jaime Frost is the literacy coach at the John Tobin Elementary School in Cambridge.

JAMIE FROST: From Pre-K to third grade, they build a foundation of literacy skills and it is these skills that once they leave third grade they then must apply across all content areas.

These third graders at the Tobin are reading the same passage from “The A to Z Mysteries” — “The Canary Caper.” One is reading at grade level, the other has no diagnosed reading disability, but is reading behind his peers.

JAMIE FROST: The little girl you saw that she has a lot of control over reading strategies. She read with a lot of expression and intonation. She understood that the characters are speaking to one another and that when she sees quotations she should change her voice.

JAMIE FROST: And the little boy you obviously heard him struggling. He is sill working on decoding skills so a lot of times when he was coming to unfamiliar words he had to really think about how to attack that word. You heard a lot of pausing. You heard less intonation.

In addition to reading, another major concern is coming to school regularly.

KAMAL CHAVDA: If you had an attendance below 90 percent in sixth grade your chances of graduating on time was 18 percent.

Kamal Chavda is a research expert for the Boston Public Schools.

KAMAL CHAVDA: It’s just unbelievable but when you think about it, it makes sense because a 90 percent attendance rate means you miss one in every 10 days of school.

MELIAGROS ALANDRO: I started cutting school when I was in middle school I have 85 days of absence in the fifth grade.

That means 17-year-old Meliagros Alandro missed about half the school year. She remembers she would get dressed for school, leave and when her mom went to work, she’d come back home and watch TV. That was the routine, unless she had a new outfit to wear.

MELIAGROS ALANDRO: When I buy new clothes. I was so young I was like I like this outfit and I would just go every day just to go with my new outfit and I would actually go to class, laughter.

One recent study indicates 43 percent of dropouts had their first off-track indicator, either academic problems or attendance, in the sixth grade, just like Alandro, who dropped out last year. Only 4 percent of dropouts developed risk factors for the first time in ninth grade.

STAFFORD PEAT: The data comes up and it sort of slaps you in the face.

Stafford Peat, director of Secondary School Services at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, says there are several other major risk factors besides low attendance. Among them, frequent transfers from one school to another and low MCAS scores in 8th grade. The state developed a warning system using these risk factors and last fall gave 24 urban school districts the names of struggling ninth graders. But beyond identifying these students, Peat says the state has not initiated interventions.

STAFFORD PEAT: I think as a state we need to determine what are the most effective interventions at the ninth grade. To me that’s the big, big challenge for Massachusetts.

Last year Boston Public Schools generated a list of incoming ninth graders who are at risk. High School Academic Superintendent Irvin Scott gave the list to high-school principals.

IRVIN SCOTT: And we said to them these are the kids you have in your school right now. Track them closely. If they are in the high risk category, they are there because of attendance, suspension and achievement, whatever. And headmasters are doing different things.

Headmaster Toby Romer of Brighton High School now requires 40 ninth graders to take an additional class after schoolNinth.  grade is considered the make or break year for high schoolers.

TOBY ROMER: We have a limited amount of resources in an urban high school but we do have some. And if we can do our best to align those resources with supports that are in place for the students who most need extra help to be successful in high school then we can really make a difference in their academic trajectory and their educational lives.

To make sure the selected students attended, program director Jennifer Hamilton called every student and their families over the summer to tell them the school day would be longer.

JENNIFER HAMILTON: There was a bunch of confused 9th graders when they had 5 courses on their list instead of 4. It was quite the struggle the first couple weeks to come. But they’ve really stepped up and they realize they can get the extra help here they need.

One of the kids at Brighton High on the “high risk of dropping out” list is sophomore Michael Amezquita. When he was first assigned an additional period in school, called “E” block, he started cutting. But now Amezquita says he likes the extra help.

MICHAEL AMEZQUITA: When you go to Eblock know going to have fun, better than regular school, it gives you chances to do your homework and the stuff they teach you is going to help you the next day in school.

And it’s working at Brighton High and several other schools where the dropout rate has gone down. Taconic High in Pittsfield, Mass., puts struggling ninth grades on a five-year path to graduate, and Lowell High provides twice as many guidance counselors and administrators for the incoming ninth-grade class. They made these interventions with little or no extra funding. These examples of success show that using hard data to identify struggling students early can reverse the dropout trend.