What if all of our efforts in the area of school improvement only make things better for the kids who would have stayed with us anyway? Maybe our mastery level of 85-100 is improving while our drop out rate remains consistent because we just keep doing what already doesn’t work for our drop outs, only we’re doing it better?
I’m serious. We’ve made improvements in G-Town. Maybe none of them changed anything for our drop-outs.
- 1. Implementation of nine additional electives
- 2. Implementation of Honors classes in English, Biology, and Social Studies
- 3. Elimination of Pre-Regents classes (which basically said to kids “we think you’re too stupid to handle Regents” and wasted a year)
- 4. Implementation of college courses, taught here by my teachers for no charge to our students, seven classes total
- 5. Restructuring of our Academic Intervention Services (AIS), which kids were getting one period out of six in help–now it’s subject specific every other day, with Regents review courses AND brought back remedial reading and math, which targets kids with more severe problems and had been eliminated when AIS came in.
- 6. New bell schedule for next year that adds four minutes to every class period, the equivalent of 19 more days of instruction per year.
- 7. Weighted grades to encourage those students most concerned about class rank to take more challenging classes.
- 8. The Panther Power program, with the G-Town Show Down, the best day of school all year, ask any kid–a positive schoolwide behavior management program.
- 9. The Taste of Gowanda, a cooking contest to bring our community members into our school for something positive and fun.
- 10. The Generosity Drive, kids and faculty raising money for local families at Christmas.
- 11. A huge K-12 literacy initiative
- 12. Native Voices, our year long, tri-district study of Native American children and drop outs
- 13. Implementation of August regents review and administration.
- 14. Summer School 2007 for credit recovery to keep kids moving on grade level. (Speaks to the retention question)
- 15. An All School Awards Picnic
- 16. Changing schedule next year to do English and Science on the block
Maybe all of those things just made it better for all of our kids who will graduate anyway. A worthy endeavor, I know, resulting in a better school, a great climate, happy faculty, staff, and students. Still losing 25 kids per year. Despite us. What factors indicate that we’re going to lose them, when are they known, and how do we break the path for each of these kids? Is it already determined for many when they get to me? Different interventions, sooner? Again, need a different set of wheels for these kids. Not sure what they look like yet. But we’ll get there.