QUOTE
State using new formula to figure graduation rate
By Deborah Sederberg, The News-Dispatch
The state of Indiana doesn't make it easy to calculate high school graduation rates.
A brilliant student who withdraws from high school to enroll in college is not a dropout.
A student who transfers to another school or to home schooling is not a dropout providing the transfer can be documented.
A student who dies is not a dropout.
A student with a long-term medical condition causing him or her to be absent for an unusually long time is not a dropout.
On the other hand, students who are in chronically poor health, causing them to be absent frequently rather than for any one long length of time and therefore unable to keep up with school work may be called dropouts.
Under the new rules, with a few - and complex - exceptions, schools are permitted to count as graduates only those students who graduate in four years.
That youngster with the chronic health issues who perhaps takes five years to graduate is not a graduate.
The new system, designed by the Indiana Legislature, is based solely on the number of students who complete high school graduation requirements within four years.
The old way of calculating the graduation rate was based on the number of high school students who remained in school from their freshman through their senior years, even if it took them more than four years to graduate.
Michigan City High School's graduation rate is the lowest in the county.
“And our poverty rate is the highest in the county,” said Jan Radford, director of curriculum and instruction for the Michigan City Area Schools. Time and again, studies produce data linking poverty to low achievement in education, she said.
“One study of 107 schools found that in schools with poverty rates of 60 percent or higher, only 53.1 percent of students graduate.
“In Michigan City, our poverty rate is 59 percent and 65.3 percent of our students graduated in four years,” she said. According to the results of that study, she said, Michigan City is beating the odds.
“Just because our graduation rate is 65.3, it doesn't mean that 34.7 percent of our students dropped out,” she added.
For example, 8.8 percent of MCHS students who did not graduate in four years are still in school and 3.6 percent have earned a GED. Some 19.2 percent are listed as “dropout or undetermined.”
Undetermined means the family disappeared without notifying the school, perhaps over summer break. The state looks for the student by his or her test number (ISTEP or GQE tests) but that number will not find students who have moved out of state.
In terms of confirmed dropouts - those who told school officials they were leaving school before graduation - the number for Michigan City High School is less than 10 percent, Radford said.
“And we know that's still too high,” she said, “and that's why we have the Strategic Plan,” noting that various strategies speak to keeping students in school and to making them successful in school.
School Board President Jeff Jones also looks to the strategic plan for improvement of graduation rates.
“We must remain diligent in following our strategic plan and I am confident we then will make progress,” he said. “I'm proud that we have begun to address these issues in a systematic and strategic way.”
Fred LaBorn, communications director for MCAS and a former school principal, like Radford, addressed poverty issues. “Schools with higher poverty rates and higher mobility rates have a harder time making the numbers,” he said.
By Deborah Sederberg, The News-Dispatch
The state of Indiana doesn't make it easy to calculate high school graduation rates.
A brilliant student who withdraws from high school to enroll in college is not a dropout.
A student who transfers to another school or to home schooling is not a dropout providing the transfer can be documented.
A student who dies is not a dropout.
A student with a long-term medical condition causing him or her to be absent for an unusually long time is not a dropout.
On the other hand, students who are in chronically poor health, causing them to be absent frequently rather than for any one long length of time and therefore unable to keep up with school work may be called dropouts.
Under the new rules, with a few - and complex - exceptions, schools are permitted to count as graduates only those students who graduate in four years.
That youngster with the chronic health issues who perhaps takes five years to graduate is not a graduate.
The new system, designed by the Indiana Legislature, is based solely on the number of students who complete high school graduation requirements within four years.
The old way of calculating the graduation rate was based on the number of high school students who remained in school from their freshman through their senior years, even if it took them more than four years to graduate.
Michigan City High School's graduation rate is the lowest in the county.
“And our poverty rate is the highest in the county,” said Jan Radford, director of curriculum and instruction for the Michigan City Area Schools. Time and again, studies produce data linking poverty to low achievement in education, she said.
“One study of 107 schools found that in schools with poverty rates of 60 percent or higher, only 53.1 percent of students graduate.
“In Michigan City, our poverty rate is 59 percent and 65.3 percent of our students graduated in four years,” she said. According to the results of that study, she said, Michigan City is beating the odds.
“Just because our graduation rate is 65.3, it doesn't mean that 34.7 percent of our students dropped out,” she added.
For example, 8.8 percent of MCHS students who did not graduate in four years are still in school and 3.6 percent have earned a GED. Some 19.2 percent are listed as “dropout or undetermined.”
Undetermined means the family disappeared without notifying the school, perhaps over summer break. The state looks for the student by his or her test number (ISTEP or GQE tests) but that number will not find students who have moved out of state.
In terms of confirmed dropouts - those who told school officials they were leaving school before graduation - the number for Michigan City High School is less than 10 percent, Radford said.
“And we know that's still too high,” she said, “and that's why we have the Strategic Plan,” noting that various strategies speak to keeping students in school and to making them successful in school.
School Board President Jeff Jones also looks to the strategic plan for improvement of graduation rates.
“We must remain diligent in following our strategic plan and I am confident we then will make progress,” he said. “I'm proud that we have begun to address these issues in a systematic and strategic way.”
Fred LaBorn, communications director for MCAS and a former school principal, like Radford, addressed poverty issues. “Schools with higher poverty rates and higher mobility rates have a harder time making the numbers,” he said.