It's easy to spot middle school students who have been held back. They loom over other students, and sometimes they are taller than their teachers, too. They know their way around every corner of the school. And it seems as though every teacher knows them and their parents.

Now, at many middle schools in the Triangle, teachers, parents and principals say they are going to extraordinary lengths to help overage students catch up.

Letting such students stay behind sharply increases the chances they will drop out once they arrive in high school discouraged, embarrassed and nearly old enough to graduate.

"You've got to confront the brutal facts," said Patrick Rhodes, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction in Durham. "When you have too many students dropping out and you have clear research that shows grade retention does not work, then you need to adjust what you're doing."

The number of high school dropouts is at a five-year high, according to a report released earlier this year. More than 22,000 students in the state left school last year without a diploma. Legislators and local leaders are on a mission to keep kids in school. They're using millions of dollars in grant money, new laws and whatever else it might take.

At Clayton Middle School, it could take the SOAR program -- Students on the Academic Rise -- for Brian Boyd to reach high school.

At 15, Brian looks like a grown man among his peers. He was supposed to be in seventh grade again this year.

But Principal Debbie Woodruff moved Brian and five other overage students up one grade level after the first nine weeks of school. They and their parents signed contracts agreeing to go to study halls, have their completed homework and school planners signed daily, and meet with a mentor weekly.

When students struggle, there is a support system ready to step in. Brian, for instance, gets a ride from Assistant Principal Eddie Price every morning. The administrator brings the teen into the school's main office every morning to help him get assignments done before the first bell.

Everybody's problem

Helping overage students is a national challenge, educators say. The threat is not only that they'll be too old in high school and drop out. Many too-old students also lose motivation and become hard for teachers to discipline. Some parents also worry that repeating students can hurt the performance of the whole class.

"It doesn't sit well with parents," said Githens Middle School teacher Christina Lee. "It doesn't sit well with me, and I'm not even a parent. ... It's important for students in different age groups to be among their peers."

Some students are overage at the beginning of the school because their birthdays are near a district's cutoff date and their parents waited a year to put them in school.

Most overage students have repeated a grade, whether they struggled with academic or behavior problems, had limited English skills or a disability.

Two years ago, Rhodes and other Durham administrators were looking at high schools and noticed classrooms were teeming with older students, many of whom had failed early on -- as early as kindergarten, Rhodes said. Though some would argue otherwise, Rhodes said scores of studies show retention doesn't help students in the long run.

"That's not even talking about the stigmatization that goes along with it," he said.

In Durham, teachers and principals decide who moves to the next grade, and most often, that's based on grades, Rhodes said. Sometimes, parents ask schools to retain their children because they don't think they're ready for the next level. In some cases, students pass state end-of-grade exams, but are hampered by failing grades in the classroom.

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