OTTUMWA —
Administrators say a report released by the Ottumwa school district this week indicates graduation rates at Ottumwa High School will jump as much as 5 percentage points this year.
“It’s not exactly where we want to be, but it’s a move in the right direction,” said Ottumwa Superintendent Davis Eidahl.
At times in the early- to mid-2000s, OHS was listed as having one of the lowest graduation rates in Iowa. In 2003, the graduation rate was the second lowest out of more than 300 school districts. In 2008, the district had the worst dropout rate in the state.
But they avoided the temptation, Eidahl said, to slap “a Band-Aid” on the problem. The district was looking for a long-term, sustainable fix. Assistant Principal Scott Maas and Freshman Dean Steve Zimmerman at the high school began working with administrators and teachers to help develop a plan.
Their research turned up a winner, but with one potentially painful drawback — the idea wouldn’t pay off for years. Still, the school board told the district to go for it. The plan would be that every 40 students or so would have a teacher whose job it was to keep them on track to graduate. If that teacher was a math teacher, they’d focus on how the students were doing in math. And that teacher would be paired with both an English and a science teacher who would step in and help keep those students on pace to graduate in their specialty areas.
On pace means students are working toward 12 credits this year — and the next, and the one after that, right through their senior year.
When they started checking to see whether students would graduate, high school counselors found that students with too few credits would be far more likely to drop out of school. In fact, Eidahl said, when the school last September said 80 percent of students were on pace to graduate, that turned out to be the amount who graduated.
The Freshman Academy started with the freshman class four years ago. Those kids are seniors this year.
“Prior to starting the Freshman Academy,” said Eidahl, “sixty to 73 percent of our freshman were on pace to graduate. These seniors, this first Freshman Academy class, 86 percent are on track to graduate.”
Juniors — next year’s seniors — are ranked at around 90 percent on pace. The class behind them looks like they’ll do better than that, he said. The superintendent credits Maas and Zimmerman with the willingness to push hard.
In a press release from the district, Maas said Zimmerman talks with parents and staff regularly about struggling students.
“The emphasis is on credits, credits, credits,” said Maas.
The biggest change is the attitude about the level of work that is acceptable.
Failing work or not turning in an assignment is no longer acceptable.
“Students can’t choose to not do it,” said Maas in his statement. “We are holding them to a higher standard.”
There are more factors than high school credits influencing graduation rates, Eidahl said, but OHS isn’t focused on those other things. That other responsibility stays in a surprising place — kindergarten.
“We put a lot of resources into K-3,” the superintendent said. “There’s a very high correlation between third-grade reading ability and high school dropout rates. The research — a lot of research shows, in fact, a 75 percent probability that if they are a [certain level] below reading level in third grade, they will not graduate high school.”
Now, he said, they’ll have to wait until the end of the school year to make sure their estimates pan out.
“I’m confident we’ll see an improvement,” he said.
Local News
August 30, 2012
Report: Graduation plan on track
Creation of Freshman Academy keeping students on pace to graduate OHS
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