Persistence to Graduation

Last Saturday, Dr. Tom Prater, vice president of the board of education, wrote a guest editorial in the News-Leader discussing the district’s Persistence to Graduation initiative. With spring break, you may have missed it.

We began the Persistence to Graduation (P2G) initiative three years ago. The early phase consisted of thorough research to give us more insight into the problem, identify students at-risk for dropping out of school much earlier in their schooling and devise appropriate interventions for those students.

P2G is a district-wide effort, involving stakeholders at the classroom, school building and district level for a more uniform system of identifying students before they fall through the cracks. Though it’s a district-wide program, interventions reflect the needs of individual students. After identifying students, teachers, principals, counselors and others put their heads together to devise intervention strategies tailored to the needs of individual children. I believe that this is the real strength of the program.

Right now, we are seeing some very positive results, as Dr. Prater mentioned in his article. For the 2008-2009 academic year, a total of 329 students had dropped out of school by February 2009. This February, that number was down to 211. Of course, we’re working hard to make sure those numbers keep declining.

Persistence to Graduation carries lots of potential. I’ll be keeping you posted on the results.