Most schools have a variety of metrics to measure how successful their high schools are. In my district, we look at ACT scores, AP scores, attendance rates, state assessments, and graduation rate. Each of these probably deserve an in depth look, but my schools metrics weren't adding up. About three years ago, we noticed that we had our highest ACT composite scores in our school's long history, our students were scoring very high on Advanced Placement tests, and our average daily attendance rates were consistently better than 95%. Unfortunately, our graduation rate was hovering around 84% and we knew that we needed to dig in and discover the root of the problem. What follows is a systematic approach that we developed that helped us address our graduation rate and get it match our other metrics.
Let me first start off by giving a brief overview of how a school's graduation rate works. Up until about three years ago, the formula for graduation rates may have differed from school to school and from state to state. There really was no consistency until governors of each state got together and developed the cohort method. In laymen terms, the cohort method simply means that when you begin the 9th grade, your clock starts and you have 4 years to graduate. Students who start the 9th grade with you are your cohort group. At the end of 4 years, students in your cohort who don't graduate count against your graduation rate. Additionally, it is important to note that students who receive special education services and go in to a transitional program (18-21 year old program) provided by the school, don't graduate and count against the graduation rate as well. For a lot of schools, that means that a 100% graduation rate is impossible. With that being said, I will preface the rest of this blog with the fact that my school typically has 4%-5% of its cohort population receiving special education services beyond 4 years, so the best possible graduation rate that we could achieve is roughly 96%.
WEEKLY HUDDLE MEETINGS
We started our systematic approach to improving our graduation rate with an idea that my superintendent brought to the table. He was reading a book entitled The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling. Using this as a model, we developed what we call weekly HUDDLE meetings that included the administrative team, guidance counselors, and the superintendent. These HUDDLE meetings last 15-minutes and take place every Wednesday morning. During these meetings, each person is responsible for making a commitment to the group on what they will do this week to help improve the graduation rate and following up on the commitment they made the prior week. At first, the HUDDLE meetings were taking about 30-40 minutes and the commitments were very generic in nature. We weren't getting to the root of the problem, we weren't being specific, and we were getting way to far in to the weeds. With a little coaching, we finally got to the point where every person on the team began getting more and more specific about their commitments each week and we now regularly run our meetings in 15-minutes. We know who our at-risk kiddos are and we provide clear and concise details regarding how we are going to help them get back on track. If we have information on specific students that some one else is committing to that week, we visit with that person afterwards to get down in the weeds a little.
I cannot stress enough how important these meetings are to improving the graduation rate. We are being intentional about identifying specific students, discussing their barriers, and committing to one another to help that student remove those barriers. We have to follow through or else we will have to report back to our team that we failed to meet our commitment for the week.
WEEKLY AT-RISK REPORTS
Most schools know which students are not performing well in schools and we are no different. We take this a step further by letting the entire staff know who is at-risk. We send a weekly at-risk email to all staff that outlines those students earning a D or F in any class. We encourage our staff to reach out to students and talk with them about their academic success whether they have the student in class or not. What we found is that students may hear from 5-6 teachers on a daily basis about improving their academic standing. When a student is getting hit up this many times a day, they know that we care about them and are serious about their academic success.
A story that I often share that is a perfect example of this took place a couple of years ago. I had been out of the office all day at a variety of meetings and made it back just in time for my end of the day supervision. I saw a student walking down the hall who I knew was on the at-risk list that week and I summoned for him to come over. He walked up to me and before I could even get a word out, he said, "Dr. Dostal. If this is about my grades, I already know. You are the sixth person to talk to me today about them and I have a plan to get the work in. I wish people would just stop talking to me about it already." I simply smiled and said thank you. He was off the at-risk list by the following week and stayed off for the remainder of the year.
PYRAMID OF INTERVENTIONS
If you haven't read Whatever It Takes by Rick DuFour, Becky DuFour, and Robert Eaker, you need to go out and purchase it immediately. In it, you will find a section on developing a Pyramid of Interventions. All schools have interventions in place, but a pyramid provides a sequential approach for when students don't learn. Interventions are not just for at-risk kids. All students receive interventions even if they aren't struggling in school. The key to interventions is schools need to identify students who are struggling early and often. If you are waiting 5-weeks before you get a struggling kiddo help, you have waited too long. Interventions need to be swift. My school made our Pyramid of Interventions part of the continuous school improvement plan and we organized our interventions in to a tiered sequence that can be found HERE. It is important for schools to note that a Pyramid of Interventions needs to be developed at the local level for them to be effective. Simply copying someone else's structure won't work because some interventions are more powerful than others.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES
Graduation rates are a DISTRICT issue that manifests itself at the high school level. We knew that we were going to improve our graduation rates only if all levels of education were involved and that is why we went back in to our data and determined graduation rates for each of our elementary and middle schools. At-risk kids need to be identified early and interventions need to be in place. When students transition from one level to another, we communicate with one another so students don't fall through the cracks. When an entire district focuses on the graduation rate, success will follow.
I will be the first to admit that what we have done is nothing magical. I am proud to announce that in three years, we have improved our graduation rate from 84.1% to 91.53%. We were able to do this because we were committed to a goal of raising our graduation rate. We were intentional about working with specific students and differentiating our approach to help them be successful. Finally, we developed relationships with our toughest kids and let them know that we care about them regardless of how tough they are to reach. When they want to push us away, we simply open up our arms and try to draw them in closer because we love them and want them to be successful.
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