About 175 people attended the Community Conversation at Lincoln High School. Parents, LPS employees and educators came hoping to hear about new strategies to raise graduation rates at district schools, and to provide their own.
Photo: Justin Wheeler, NewsNetNebraska
Lincoln's high school graduation rate may top the national average, but community and school officials don't think it's good enough.
They want to get more students involved in clubs and extracurricular activities, build closer relationships between students and teachers and develop more tailored academic programs such as a popular zoo-based science program and another focused on developing young entrepreneurs. Such measures, they say, may push the graduation rate above the 77.9 percent Lincoln Public Schools logged in 2008.
"An 80 percent graduation rate, which is what approximately we have had over the past several years is a good graduation rate," LPS Superintendent Susan Gourley said. "But we want a great graduation rate. We want every student to graduate."
LPS, the Foundation for LPS and United Way of Lincoln and Lancaster County hosted a community conversation about improving the graduation rate on November 5. The conversation, which followed a similar October session, attracted over 200 people.
LPS can't afford to let its margin of success in graduation shrink. Its graduation rate is just a few percentage points higher than the national average of 74.8 percent. What's more, at least 3 percent of LPS students dropout, compared with 1.69 percent statewide in Nebraska, according to state figures.
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Taking an in-depth look of the class of 2008, the LPS Assessment and Evaluation Team investigated why that last 20 percent of students didn't graduate.The team surveyed principals, parents and student to get a handle on why those students, totaling 286, didn't graduate.
Reasons varied. Some must help support their families. Others have mental and behavioral issues. Some just feel alienated from school.
"It's a complicated-complicated issue," T.J. McDowell Jr., executive director of the Clyde Malone Center said. "There's no magic wand that's going to fix it for every kid."But several solutions are being bandied about. Greater club activity, for instance, keeps students engaged. This makes them want to come to school every day and ultimately to finish.
And targeted academic programs can help too, officials say. Northeast High School this year, for instance, started an Academic Success program that targets freshmen and sophomores who have failed two or more classes. The program focuses on helping students develop skills like organization and goal- setting.
A common theme for improving the graduation rate is helping students and adults build strong relationships. "No sufficient learning can occur without sufficient relationships," Clyde Malone chief McDowell said.
These Lincoln High students have stayed in school and are on track to graduate. Even so, the dropout rate at Lincoln High is almost double that of other schools in the district. Trouble at home, financial difficulties and a lack of connection with educators all contribute to high school drop out rates.
Photo: Justin Wheeler, NewsNetNebraska.
McDowell recalls a time when he was volunteering at the Lighthouse, a community center for at-risk youth, and a young man told him he just dropped out."They don't care about me," the young man said, weeping. McDowell said the "they" he was referring to was his high school's teachers and staff.
One high school, by contrast, had a profound impact on McDowell.As a senior at Lincoln High School, he was taking an honors citizenship issues course, a level higher than he thought he could achieve. He remembers the teacher addressing them as scholars every morning.
"I remember thinking, 'I'm no scholar, man, I'm a football player,'" McDowell said.
One weekend, he remembers the teacher giving a very hard assignment, which he workeddiligently on.When the teacher handed back the assignment in class, McDowell was the only one who received an "A" and the teacher handed him an application to Harvard with his graded assignment.
"It changed the trajectory of my life," McDowell said. "Because as a result, I said, ‘well you know if Mr. Tegeler said I could attend Harvard, the least I can do is attend Wesleyan to do well academically,' which is what I did."
Among the panelists was T.J. McDowell, director of the Clyde Malone Community Center, who spoke about about how racial differences between teachers and students can impact the decision to stay in, or dropout.
Photo: Justin Wheeler, NewsNetNebraska .
School administrators argue that teachers and staff should look at their own behavior, not just that of the students, to address the drop-out problem. "Look in the mirror instead of looking out the window," said Lincoln Northeast High School Administrator Doug Weatherholt.
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