In October, Re-1 district officials released the Indian Policies and Procedures Report, which includes information about student test scores, discipline, activities and other areas.
Graduation rates rose to 52 percent in 2013, 54 percent in 2014, and 68 percent in 2015, the most recent year for which numbers are available. While just 24 percent of Native American students graduated in 2013, 49 percent graduated in 2015.
CDE will not release exact data on graduation rates for the 2015-2016 year until Jan. 12, but Re-1 Superintendent Lori Haukeness said Friday that she anticipates that the data will show that the district’s graduation rate has continued to improve.
“The high school’s graduation rate has been on a steady incline,” she said.
Student support improves graduationIn the past several years, Montezuma-Cortez High School has looked to improve its graduation rate by installing additional wraparound services for students, Haukeness said. Many students were dropping out of school as seniors, she said. The school has increased academic counseling to monitor students more closely, so that when they fall behind in classwork or credits they have resources to get back on track, she said.
M-CHS also offers a credit recovery program each summer, Haukeness said. Students who missed out on credits or did not complete a class can attend the summer session and complete coursework to get credit for those classes. They avoid having to take the whole class over again, she said.
An M-CHS teacher also monitors academic performance for students who are at-risk of dropping out, Haukeness said.
“She can offer additional support for students falling behind,” she said. “It’s an ongoing process.”
SWOS looks to improve low graduation rateThe 68 percent Re-1 rate is still lower than the state average graduation rate of 79.7 percent among 185 school districts. Statewide, 77.3 percent of all students graduated during the 2014-2015 school year.
M-CHS graduated 81 percent of students, but the 16 percent rate at Southwest Open School affected the district-wide average, Haukeness said. Re-1 officials are working with the charter school to address the low rate, she said.
First-year SWOS director Charlotte Wolf said Friday the school is looking at ways to provide more student support and make them more comfortable so they are more invested in school.
“We are looking at the root causes for this and how we can support that,” she said.
SWOS staff members are working to develop an improvement plan to get more students to graduate, she said.
Some students who attend SWOS are “undercredited and overaged,” meaning that they come in to the school older and with fewer credits than necessary to finish high school on time, Wolf said. That is one main reason the school’s graduation rate is so low, she said.
The goal is to get those students back on track to graduate by age 18, but that doesn’t always happen, she said.
“(Students) may have a history of not doing well or dropping out from other schools,” she said. “We look at how to move them to graduation.”
Peer mentors may improve dropout rateRe-1 dropout rates have increased in the past few years, from 5.2 percent in the 2012-2013 year to 8.4 percent in the 2014-2015 year.
At M-CHS, dropouts have stayed about the same, around 6 or 7 percent during those years. SWOS has seen dropouts increase, from 12.2 percent in 2013 to 27.9 percent in 2015. There were just over 11,000 dropouts reported statewide in 2015, for a rate of 2.5 percent.
Wolf said one idea school staffers have to improve dropout rates and student attendance is a peer mentoring system. Students who have done well in school and are on track academically would be paired with students who are still struggling.
“Some students get into this pattern of being truant,” Wolf said. “If they can see that other persons have overcome issues to graduate, instead of adults telling them what to do all the time they can look at those peer mentors.”
Post-secondary readiness also is a focus for the school, she said. SWOS has a program that helps get students in touch with businesses to set up internships in technical or vocational areas, such as welding. That provides students another option if they don’t plan to attend college, she said.
“As we have ongoing discussions on how to improve this, we will have more ideas,” Wolf said. “This is one of our focus points — to improve graduation and dropout rates.”
jacobk@the-journal.com