School Information System: Madison School District High School Graduation Rate Discussion

April 8, 2012

Madison School District High School Graduation Rate Discussion

This memo is follow up to a discussion of MMSD high school completion rates and on track status from February. Highlights of this follow up are:
Preparedness matters. Results from the Kindergarten Screener are predictive of a student's likelihood of completing high school. Of students starting their school years unprepared, over 25% will drop out and nearly half will take longer than four years to complete high school.
Attendance matters. Over half of the students with a high school attendance rate less than 80% will drop out.
Credits matter. Students not earning the required number of credits in Grade 9 are less likely to complete high school. Students earning one credit or less face a dropout rate of 63%.
Tenure matters. The length of time a student is with MMSD or in one of its high schools has an impact on the likelihood he or she will earn a diploma or equivalency. Getting a student to attend longer than his or her first year is critical.
Behavior matters. Students with one or more suspensions per year complete high school only one third of the time.
Revised on track calculations still indicate a decline among Hispanic, black and ELL students. However, the decline is not as pronounced as it was once the numbers for 2009-10 presented in February were revisited.

The Board had also asked about the characteristics of certain students. Students enrolled less than four years with MMSD are more likely to be black, Hispanic, low income, and ELL. They are less likely to have earned 5.5 credits in Grade 9 and are less likely to have high attendance. Interestingly, they are less likely to be identified as special ed and are less likely to have been suspended. These may reflect the shorter duration of their enrollment with MMSD.
Black students known to be continuing beyond four years in high school are more likely to be low income, special ed, enroll in SAPAR, and have at least on out-of-school suspension. They are also less likely to have earned 5.5 credits in Grade 9.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 8, 2012 1:06 AM
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Comments

I'd be interested in seeing the grad rates for minority students who attended the MMSD from K-1 through high school graduation; then, say, 4th grade through 12th; 8th grade through 12th, etc. We all know mobility matters A LOT. Does the district even collect this type of data?

Posted by: david cohen at April 8, 2012 7:39 PM

I'm surprised that the litany of "...matters" above omits the most important: "Reading matters." The Annie E. Casey Foundation study that links third grade reading proficiency to graduation rates (http://datacenter.kidscount.org/reports/readingmatters.aspx) is well known at this point (and, if I'm not mistaken, has even been referred to in the district's achievement gap presentations). Effective reading instruction is necessary to overcome the disparities in kindergarten readiness (and to sustain any progress in narrowing those disparities), and the academic and behavioral problems that predict (according to the district's analysis) failure to graduate are but the expected result of students faced with a curriculum that is inaccessible to their reading level, having fallen behind with no opportunity to catch up.

Posted by: Chan Stroman at April 9, 2012 5:47 PM

While one of the statements is that "tenure matters" and the length of time a student spends in MMSD is apparently positively correlated with graduation, a student who attends an MMSD high school for 2.1-3.5 years is actually less likely to complete high school than one who is here for 1-2 years. (Attachment #3) (In fairness, the statement is that it "has an impact", not that it is a positive impact, though it seems that is what was intended as the conclusion.) I can imagine a number of reasons for that, but I don't know how accurate any of them are.

Posted by: Steve Rankin at April 16, 2012 11:00 AM

Grad rates are too easy a statistic to manipulate. Having graduated from MMSD is NOT a statement that those who have graduated have a high school education.

Perhaps the high drop out rate for minority kids is a statistic that should be interpreted as "it is the smart minority kids who have dropped out of MMSD having realized that the system is wasting their time and that dropping out might give then the opportunity to spend time in more fruitful experiences."

The solution might be a school (charter?) that drops the facade of touchy-feely MMSD of low expectations and offers the kids a bootcamp focused on mastery of core curriculum in an accelerated curriculum that won't waste their time.

Posted by: Larry Winkler at April 16, 2012 11:50 AM

Again, the problem is not the kids. The problem is there is no more a future with a HS diploma than there is without one. The solution to our high school graduation is to offer a dual graduation. Many areas have this......if MATC or Madison College and MMSD were to develop dual degrees, when you graduate from La Follette and Memorial you also get a certificate from madison college in (X) which will qualify you to apply for careers and jobs in (X) I would bet a million bucks the graduation rate would go up.

Posted by: mary battaglia at April 16, 2012 3:25 PM

"The problem is there is no more a future with a HS diploma than there is without one. "

This comment strikes me as the real problem with education -- the belief or view that an education is merely utilitarian and is supposed to give you a job. Not so, and likely never was.

Schooling was considered important for itself, and not for some other purpose. For most, the future was to work the family farm, or apprentice with the blacksmith, or barber, or pharmacist. For girl, to become a teacher. Education was cultural, not financial.

The ridiculousness of today is that we encourage children to question why learning this or that is important, and allow them to expect adults to give an answer that will satisfy them before they put the effort in.

The real answer should be "because we said so; just do what you're told and stop asking dumb questions." Maybe, just maybe, having acquired some modicum of knowledge and the ability to "reck'n", the kids will figure out that some things they were forced to learn became useful.

Perhaps 100 years ago and back, not being educated was an embarrassment, and a matter of survival. How to figure how much grain to store so that you and your livestock will survive the winter, or that the local merchant won't bilk you for goods that you buy from him or sell to him. Or how to take care of your affairs so the banker won't foreclose on you. Or how to figure the cost and materials to build a new shed, or dig a well.

Posted by: Larry Winkler at April 16, 2012 4:17 PM