FULTON, NY – Recognizing its negative standing in graduation rates, Fulton school district is working to focus its attention on students who may be slipping through the cracks to make sure all students make their way across the graduation stage with a diploma in hand.
The State Education Department released a report of statewide graduation rates Monday. While SED says that graduation rates are up almost three percentage points from graduation rates two years before, Fulton‘s rates for the three years in the report were below state averages.
Fulton’s 2003 cohort of students who were set to graduate in 2007 showed the lowest four-year graduation rate of the nine districts in Oswego County.
“Obviously we are very disappointed with where our rate was,†Superintendent Bill Lynch said.
“This is rock bottom that Fulton City School District will hit,†Elizabeth Conners, executive director of instruction and assessment, told the Fulton Board of Education Tuesday evening.
In addition to graduation rate data, Conners provided the board with copies of the school district’s report card that the state released this year for 2006-07. Conners said that the graduation rates show inconsistencies between the two reports.
Conners also noted that this was the first year that the state provided information in the graduation report for students who complete school in August. She said that while the June reporting was similar to the data that Fulton maintains in house, the August figures did not align.
“There are errors in the August data across the state,†Conners said. “Our numbers may change or they may not but the numbers are not matching.â€ÂÂ
Regardless, board members expressed disappointment with Fulton’s standing.
“This is disappointing given all that we have funded,†longtime board of education member Robbin Griffin said.
Conners pointed out that there are several initiatives that the district has implemented in recent years that have not reached the upper grades at the high school. Griffin stressed that there are several others that have.
“We deserve to be criticized,†Griffin said. “I am very unhappy with where we’re at. We have spent a lot of money and we have nothing to show for it.â€ÂÂ
Conners explained that the district has a group of students moving through the high school that were at the junior high during its “School in Need of Improvement†status. She said while there have been several positive efforts to fix the problems, the core problems were apparently not addressed with that group.
“We’ve been able to turn the junior high around,†Conners said. She noted, however, that the students who came in during the repair were the students who were benefiting from those programs.
Board vice president Matthew Geitner said that in a seven county area, several districts that are used for comparison purposes based on size and wealth have turned negative situations around.
“Of seven counties… we have the worst graduation rates of students with disabilities,†Geitner said. “It is beyond embarrassing.â€ÂÂ
“We have three consecutive years of ‘we’re not doing very good,’†Griffin noted. “It is not a one-year snapshot.â€ÂÂ
Conners validated the board’s disappointment and said that the district’s graduation rates for the three years in the report are a problem.
“We are all bothered by this trend,†Conners said.
Conners noted that the district is working to implement new programs that will target needs of students, such as efforts for credit recovery. In addition, she said the district is working now to track data to try to identify the core problems.
“We are trying to get to the root cause of what’s working and not working,†Conners said.
Some of those efforts are focusing on looking at class grades versus assessment grades. Another, she said, is looking at the barriers to learning from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
“We are going to focus attention on some things at the high school to identify every kid who is at risk or moderately at risk to make sure they don’t slip through the cracks,†Lynch said.
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