Promise Fulfilled

Louisiana has a number of success stories of schools that dramatically raised their graduation rates in a relatively short span of time. School leaders, teachers, state and district leaders, and community organizations across the state have contributed to this progress. Education’s Next Horizon recently partnered with the Picard Center for Child Development and Lifelong Learning to conduct a research project that captures those success stories. The project focused on three criteria for measuring school graduation success:

1. Schools had a cohort graduation rate of at least 80 percent in 2008.
2. The graduation rate increased by at least 10 percentage points from 2005 to 2009.
3. The schools sustained the 80 percent graduation rate and increased the rate by at
   least 10 percentage points through 2009.

Based on 2009‐2010 data, 36 high schools met the criteria and participated in the research by responding to an online survey in the spring of 2011. Promise Fulfilled:  Louisiana’s 80/10 High Schools identifies the characteristics and commonalities of the schools and identifies practices that worked best for them in increasing graduation rates.
The 80/10 schools incorporated a variety of practices and methods to improve their graduation rates: 

• The integration of accelerated curriculum, continuous improvement practices, community involvement, and the development and fostering of healthy adult-student relationships all helped to ultimately raise the graduation rates of these schools. 

• The emphasis, whether career or technical in nature, was focused on students earning credits to advance.

• Students who had not mastered the required standards were provided concentrated, focused, strategic remediation on those standards, and they had opportunities to earn course credit for subjects previously failed. 

• The use of assessment of both students and teachers were used to evaluate student learning and improve teacher curriculum and instructional strategies. 

• Schools often tried to provide a smoother and more effective transition to the 9th grade. 

• The use of summer programs and increased structure within the 9th grade provided schools with the opportunity to help foster the growth of their students in one of their most critical years. 

• Teachers, parents, and administrators worked together to create and use tools, including professional learning, to ensure rigor and effective instruction in each classroom and caring environment. 

• Community role models and mentors were often brought in to provide more adult role models for students. 

Overall, the most prominently used strategies to improve graduation rates were (1) creation of rigorous coursework and curriculum, (2) the addition of higher level coursework, (3) increased utilization of school data to modify curriculum and instruction, and (4) use of benchmarks and assessments.  Additionally, enabling students to remediate courses when struggling and to obtain grade and credit recovery contributed significantly to increased graduation rates in the 80/10 schools.