On Friday, August 11, the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System released four-year data regarding dropout rates. The statewide graduation was reported as 74.4 percent, with the dropout rate at 18.2 percent.
Aragon High School’s adjusted 4-year derived dropout rate, which, according to the published CALPADS report, is “an estimate of the percent of students who would drop out in a four-year period based on data collected for a single year,” stood at 3.7 percent. The San Mateo Union High School District, on the other hand, had a corresponding figure that was over twice that of Aragon’s at 8.7 percent.
Commenting on the released data, Assistant Principal Jim Coe said, “What we’re trying to do is prevent students from failing. So the support classes, the tutorials, and all that stuff is designed to prevent students from failing a course.
“Usually, we do a good job with the counseling staff to screen students and prevent them from getting behind in credits. Encouraging them. Putting them in the right courses. Meeting with parents. All that kind of stuff to get them to turn their academic life around.”
Coe noted that the SMUHSD had formed committees in the previous year that focused on freshman students with regard to identifying and supporting failing individuals. He said, “We still need to do work for the sophomores, and so a committee will be formed this year to look specifically at our sophomore program [and decide] whether we have something Peninsula-like … after the freshman year, if a student is still continuing to fail [despite] all the forces that we’ve put in place, maybe we do need an alternative program at that point. Not wait till junior year, but start the alternative program the sophomore year because they need something different. … The other piece is ‘What are we going to do for students who have failed forty or more units? How are we going to meet that need?’”
Speaking on support systems for students, Counselor Steve Allekotte said, “One thing [counselors] do is monitor their success. Every six weeks, we print what we a call a ‘D-F List’: multiple D’s and F’s. And those are the kids that we’re monitoring, calling in, setting up parent conferences sometimes. So we’re trying to keep kids from falling behind and having them go to Peninsula.
Referring to Aragon’s comparably low dropout rate, Allekotte added, “I think we’ve got an incredible teaching staff … And because each student has an advisor and a counselor, we’re able to monitor these kids more closely and more regularly.”
English teacher Genevieve Thurtle, who currently serves as Aragon’s professional development site coordinator and the San Mateo Union High School District’s professional development district coordinator, provided insight into current initiatives aimed at improving instructional strategies. She said, “We’re talking more specifically about struggling populations. For example, [for] many of our mainstream EL students, there was a significant drop in standardized test scores here at Aragon … Pat Kurtz and I are looking at those numbers and those students and trying to figure out if those students are placed properly in support classes that they need in order to do well in English and in math.
“So one of the things that we’ll be doing this year is doing professional development that is related to targeting that population: figuring out ways to incorporate teaching strategies that are most effective for those students because it tends to be those types of students that do end up dropping out of high schools – the ones that are struggling, who sort of have this habituation to failure in different classes.”
The released data as a whole was heralded for its improved accuracy, which was attributed to the use of statewide student identifiers. A unique, randomly-generated, 10-digit number assigned to each student, SSIDs enabled CALPADS to track students as they transferred from one public school to another within the state of California, and thereby more effectively identify the students who did dropout.
