1. Discipline & Withdrawal Report.  Some findings from these two reports:

1. The graduation rate continues to climb.  Data for the Class of 2012 will not be verified until 2013, but I am anticipating a graduation rate of at least 83.3% and possibly 86.6%. Our goal was 90%, which we fell short of, but we have at least 95% of each of the next three graduating classes still enrolled in school and on-track for graduation.  We are on the brink of achieving our once seemingly unrealistic goal: a four year, on-time regular diploma earning rate over 95%.

2. The dropout rate has increased slightly, possibly to 4.25%.  It is difficult to tell which year the DOE will assign dropouts to, but we had between 4-6 students dropout this school year.  Three were “post-grads” attempting to earn their diploma after their class had graduated, while three were underclassmen.  The rate is higher than we are comfortable with, but is lower than the historical dropout rate which has been between 5%-10% annually.

3. We have now gone three years without an expulsion (… knock on wood).

4. Suspensions increased slightly, but still remained significantly below previous years.  Insubordination/willful disobedience and disrespectful behavior towards staff members (usually in the form of swearing at them) remain the main reasons that students are suspended.  Of the 57 suspensions, nearly half were “earned” by two students.

2. Course Failure Report.  As noted at the semester, course failures increased this school year.  The greatest proportional increase over last year was in the number of students failing more than one course- this is a critical indicator when considering students at risk of dropping out.  While this is a very concerning statistics, I feel that we have a pretty strong support and intervention system in place [see #4- credit recovery update, below].  This is of course a very important data point to monitor, but I feel that we are in a much better place to do something positive for students who fail courses than we were in past years with higher rates of failure.  Of course, the best intervention is prevention, and we will work hard to try to reduce the number of students who fail next year.

Not shown in the data is the number of students eligible for credit recovery.  Unlike the first semester, almost all failing grades were high enough to allow the students to be eligible for credit recovery.

3. Graduation Portfolio Progress Report.  The Class of 2013 will be the first DISHS students to graduate with proficiency-based (or standards-based) graduation requirements.  Students since 2010 have been required to complete a Senior Exhibition, but this will be the first year that students are required to complete a Senior Exhibition and a Graduation Portfolio. We've struggled over the past three years to find a good database for the Graduation Portfolio system, but we think we have finally found one- meaning that I can report on the progress of each class towards completion of the graduation portfolio.

The data in the table is slightly mis-leading, as it appears that only 34%-52% of each class are “on track” to graduate.  However, there is a pretty large group  of students in each grade who are “not quite on track, not quite in danger.”  Since students can revise portfolio tasks over the summer and through the first quarter of next year, a large percentage of students are likely to be classified as “on track” or even “complete.”  While it is not good that 9th and 10th grade students are classified as “in danger,” they have adequate time to get caught up.  The greatest concern is the two members of the Class of 2013 who are behind.

One great advantage that we have this year is the summer Learning Center, which will focus on credit recovery and Portfolio Task revision.  Ms. Poyant has already made a list of students most in need of revising portfolio tasks and will be contacting parents by both phone and mail to try to get students into the Learning Center this summer to work on getting caught up.