Graduation

1
Graduation

• Ready or not?

2

• Education is not the
• filling of a pail,
• but the lighting of a fire.
• - William Butler Yeats

3
What do students who have dropped out have to
say?

• The New 3 Rs

The Silent Epidemic Perspectives of High School 
Dropouts March 2006
4
Rigor

• 88 percent reported having passing grades, with 62
   percent having a C and above.
•  
• 70 percent were confident that they could have 
  graduated from high school (58 percent dropped
  out with two years or less to complete high 
  school).
•  
• 66 percent reported they would have worked 
  harder if school expectations were higher. 

5
Relevance

• 47 percent reported that classes were not
  interesting.
• 81 percent recognized that graduating from high
  school was vital to their future success.
• 74 percent said they would have stayed in school
  if they had it to do over again. 

6
Relationships

• 33 percent believed that there was not one staff
  member who personally cared about their success.
• 43 percent did not have a teacher or staff member
  with whom they could talk about school problems.
• 57 percent did not have a teacher or staff member
  with whom they could talk about personal
  problems. 

7
Here Now

• The current non-completion rate (did not graduate
  on time) for students who entered Gordon County
  Schools in 2005-06 is 38.2, up from 41.4 the
  previous year and 49.5 two years ago.
• The current non-completion rate (do not receive a
  high school diploma or an equivalent education)
  for Gordon County citizens ages 25 and older is
  34.1.

8
The Goal

• Ultimately
• Every student graduates post-secondary and/or
  workforce ready.
• Short-term
• Increase the graduation rate
• by 5 each year.

9
How?

• Identify those who are at-risk and give them a
  plan for success
• -Graduation teams, graduation plan, SSAVE
  (Sonoraville Summer Added Value Education)
• Increase options
• - Credit recovery, flexible scheduling,
  vocational placements, dual-enrollment, course
  variety through e-learning

10
How?

• Improve the school culture
• -Relationships(!!!), rewards, making learning
  fun, creating a setting that is enjoyable
• Make school more challenging
• -GPS Standards, teacher commitment

11

• The match is
• in your hands.

12
Responsibilities of theGraduation Coach

• To provide strategic graduation planning as a
  process of providing assistance to all high
  school students, individually and in groups,
  regarding high school graduation and completion,
  including but not limited to
• Analyzing data to identify students or
  subgroups with potential high school graduation
  problems
• Planning, implementing, and tracking individual
  high school graduation plans
• Identifying and resolving barriers to
  graduation
• Facilitating career choices and planning.

13
Responsibilities of theGraduation Coach

• Utilize all available data and components of a
  profile of characteristics of potential dropouts
  to identify high school students with the high
  probability of not graduating
• Develop and implement, in coordination with a
  Graduation Team, an Individual Graduation Plan
  (IGP) that includes intervention strategies to
  increase the likelihood that these students will
  stay in school and graduate
• Provide training to parents/guardians of
  students identified as being at risk of not
  graduating
• Identify and link area social agencies with
  at-risk youth and their parents

14
Responsibilities of theGraduation Coach

• Collaborate with feeder middle schools and
  coordinate a transition program for 9th graders
  to successfully adapt to the rigor of high
  school
• Develop partnerships with community organizations
  to support the goals of the high school
  graduation initiative
• Conduct and analyze on-going formative and
  summative evaluation data of the program and
  provide and/or submit reports as scheduled and
  requested.