West Carrollton’s graduation rate was 73.5 percent in the class of 2010, with more than one in every four students not graduating. Its rate rose to 78.5 percent in 2011, 80.5 in 2012, 86.2 in 2013 and 91.3 for 2014.
Veteran superintendent Rusty Clifford credited a “tremendous staff” for changing school culture and focusing on continuous, incremental improvement. He said students’ biggest obstacle to graduation has been earning the required credits, not passing the Ohio Graduation Test.
“To get the credits, you have to be here. You have to create a culture where kids want to come to school. It’s hard work,” Clifford said. “One of our key messages that really resonates is helping students realize that a high school diploma is the first chapter to lifelong learning.
“It’s not just about getting there. The ultimate goal is graduating with options and choices.”
Highest scores
Twenty-one school districts statewide had a 100 percent graduation rate for 2014. They were mostly small, rural districts, including Russia, Fairlawn and Botkins schools in Shelby County.
More than half of Ohio school districts (330 of 610) received A’s by posting four-year graduation rates of 93 percent or higher. A majority of districts in the five-county Dayton area (27 of 45) also earned A’s.
Springboro, a district of nearly 6,000 students, posted the highest graduation rate in the core Dayton area, at 98.4 percent. Right behind them were much smaller districts Twin Valley (98.4), Preble Shawnee (98.2), Tipp City (98.0) and Covington (98.0).
“First and foremost, our students and their families value education, which means they come to school, ready to learn. We don’t really have attendance issues,” said Springboro High School Principal Kyle Martin. “Then, we work to identify students who may need intervention to be successful. We are proactive through credit checks and working with our counselors and teachers to target students who might otherwise struggle to graduate.”
Springboro assistant principal Michael Myers said the high school hopes to keep graduation rates high, thanks to a new credit recovery program. Students who fail a class can work on the subject again at their own pace, after school via the combination online/offline APEX program, until they pass the checkpoints and tests to earn credit.
Myers said the program made a difference in getting five more students to graduate last year.
Lowest scores
On the other side of the chart, Dayton (72.1), Trotwood (75.4) and Northridge (79.5) were the only local school districts with four-year graduation rates under 80 percent, placing them in the bottom 5 percent statewide.
Dayton Public Schools’ graduation rate stagnated after growing from 59.6 to 72.2 percent the previous three years. But Dayton was not among the state’s 10 lowest districts, and ranked in the middle of the state’s large urban schools, posting a better graduation rate than Cincinnati, Cleveland, Youngstown and Toledo, and coming within 2 percentage points of Akron, Columbus and Canton.
DPS officials declined to comment on the report card, saying they would wait until concerns with the state’s data had been addressed. According to the Ohio Department of Education, DPS has appealed some of the data in the Prepared for Success section of its report card, but not in the Graduation Rate or K-3 Literacy sections.
The nation’s high school graduation rate hit 82 percent in 2013-14, according to data released in December by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. That’s the highest level since states adopted a new uniform way of calculating graduation rates five years ago.
Other measures
The state also releases a five-year graduation rate, which deals with a different set of students. The five-year rate measures all students who would have been in the class of 2013 had they graduated on time — but it gives them a fifth year to do so.
Carlisle, Miami East and Newton schools were among the districts that achieved 100 percent graduation on that measure. The only local districts to receive a grade of “F” on that measure were Dayton (78.0 percent) and Northridge (73.6).
A student counts toward a district’s graduation rate for a given year if he begins ninth grade with the rest of that class, or transfers into the district later in high school. Students who transfer out during high school and enroll in another district are removed from the originating district’s calculation.
Students who drop out, or remain in school but do not graduate — because of lack of credits, failure to pass the Ohio Graduation Tests, failing a required course, or staying beyond four years on a special education plan — count against the district as nongraduates.
The graduating classes addressed by this report card were governed by the state’s older graduation rules, meaning they needed to earn 20 credits in required courses, plus pass the OGT.
Starting with the class of 2018, students will still need to earn the credits, but will have three graduation options — compiling a passing score on the state’s new end-of-course exams, earning a remediation-free score on the ACT or SAT college entrance exam, or earning an approved industry credential and passing a workplace readiness test.
The rest of the state report card, which includes the primary achievement and progress grades from last year’s state tests, will be released Feb. 25, because of delays in setting the grading scale for those tests.
Schools and districts will be graded on several individual measures on the report card, but will not receive an overall grade or rating.
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