Education and community leaders continue to research strategies for helping more teenagers earn a high school diploma two months after they convened at a Graduation for All Summit in Springdale.
Boosting the region’s levels of education requires engaging and keeping students in school, especially those most at risk of dropping out before earning a diploma, said Kim Davis, manager of education initiatives for the Northwest Arkansas Council, a nonprofit organizationthat focuses on projects to promote the region.
“The council believes that our education system is one of the primary pushes that will help our economy move forward,” Davis said. “We want to support those students that are currently in the pipeline and expand that pipeline.”
The council organized the Graduation for All Summit in October that brought together superintendents, legislators, teachers and students from across Northwest Arkansas to brainstorm ideas about helping more students complete high school. Theconference was one project aimed at increasing the number of Northwest Arkansas residents with high school diplomas and college degrees.
Since the summit on graduation, education and business leaders have discussed expanding the Reach Out program that was started two years ago.
The Reach Out program started in fall 2011 with the Siloam Springs School District and expanded to all high schools in Benton and Washington counties, Davis said. The high schools compiled a list of about 560 students whodid not show up for the first day of school and assembled teams to call students. The teams made 160 home visits the next weekend, and 35 students returned to school as a result of the home visits and phone calls on Aug. 27.
A council workgroup on education also has discussed the need to provide services to keep students in school once they return, Davis said.
Students invited to the summit described barriers they face in finishing high school, he said. Some of them were balancing school work with jobs, needed to help pay household bills or were taking care of their own young children. Some students needed programs that would allow them to earn credit for graduation on a flexible schedule.
Others would like to take advantage of programs that provide credit toward high school graduation and a college diploma, but the cost can be prohibitive, Davis said.
Zack Reed, 18, attended the summit as a student representative for the Alternative Learning Environment program for Huntsville High School. When students struggle, they benefitwhen a teacher takes time to get to know them and find out what’s affecting their lives outside of school, Reed said. At the main high school, Reed appreciated being able to go to a soccer coach who taught history when he was angry or having problems.
“It helped me tremendously through high school just having that role model,” Reed said. “That’s who I would want to go to.”
Reed knows of other students who have difficulties at home and who are stressed about keeping up with their homework while working.
“There’s difficult situations that are really just unbelievably hard for students,” he said.
Reed explained that he was suspended from school but was allowed to finish credits for his diploma through the alternative program. He finished all of his credits in December and will walk in a graduation ceremony in May. He’s set to go to boot camp for the Marines in August.
Springdale educators learned from students at the summit about the need for meaningful school work and for programs that allow them to make up credits, said Marsha Jones, a Springdale School District administrator who was a leader in organizingthe summit for the council’s education workgroup. Online classes and Saturday classes are options the district could consider to help students make up lost credits for graduation, she said.
Meaningful work makes courses relevant for students and keeps them from getting bored, Jones said. Career academies connect coursework with the work of law enforcement and health care professionals. Project-based learning allows students to apply what they are learning to real problems, such as determining the speed of a car based on skid marks left at an accident scene.
“We’re moving to a much more rigorous set of expectations,” she said. “We will need to change our support systems for students.”
High schools already have students who struggle to keep pace with their classes under the existing curriculum standards, sometimes for reasons such as too many absences, Jones said. New Common Core State Standards will be implemented in all public high schools across the state next year.
“The problem may be exacerbated,” she said. “We don’t want to have a greater dropout problem.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/15/2013