Celebrations

The graduation rates were released last week and my school results showed that we have doubled our numbers. We went from 25% to 49.5% in one year and also revealed a completion rate of 80%. This monumental increases were accomplished through the dedication of all staff members to embrace the many innovative strategies that were implemented to drive improvement.  Those strategies include:

1. The introduction of the Student Circle of Support Team Concept.  The SST or Dream team as we call it, included the counselors, attendance specialist, social worker, graduation coach and parent/community liaison. The team facilitated the review of the student achievement data and comprehensive needs assessment.  Based on the data, they designed a holistic approach to the evaluation of student achievement, student discipline, and attendance data drilled down to the individual student level.  As a result of this data analysis the team the implemented what is now known as Operation Graduation.  Operation Graduation was a strategic breakdown of the entire population of the school based on cohort.  A personal profile was developed for each student. The students were tracked and assigned priorities based on their risk level toward graduation. 

2. The master schedule and bell schedule were redesigned to reflect a schedule that enables us to develop flexible learning plans for our students.   Flexible scheduling included adding three extra periods to the school day, Saturday School and the summer mini-mester component.  The impact of the teachers and staff who volunteered work these additional hours is truly reflective in the increase number of student accomplishing the goal of graduation.

4. Our Increased Learning Time (ILT) program where students are able to accelerate and remediate their learning based on their individual needs is also reflective of this increase in graduation rate.