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New High School Cohort Reports Account for All Students

Reports on VDOE website Include Graduation, Completion & Dropout Data

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) today released state-level, division-level and school-level cohort reports that detail outcomes for students who entered the ninth-grade for the first time in 2004 and were scheduled to graduate in the spring of 2008. The reports complement the Virginia On-Time Graduation Rate reports published last October with data on dropouts, students still in school, students on long-term leave and students in the cohort whose records were properly reported to the state but whose status is unconfirmed.

"The publication of these cohort reports represents a milestone in the commonwealth's effort to account for every student," Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright said. "This is vital information that will shape efforts at the state and local levels to keep students in school and on track toward earning a diploma."

Corrections and updates to student records made since last fall increased the 2008 Virginia On-Time Graduation Rate for the commonwealth to 82.1 percent, eight-tenths of a point higher than the 81.3 percent originally reported for the class of 2008.

Of the 96,152 students in the cohort, 8,347, or 8.7 percent, dropped out; 0.4 percent were reported as being on long-term medical or family leave or expelled for one year with the potential of returning to school; and the status of two percent could not be determined with current state data. A student whose status is unconfirmed is not counted as a dropout until it is established that he or she is not enrolled in another public or private school or receiving home instruction.

The data show that students in the cohort who repeated grades, attended multiple schools and who were frequently absent were more likely to drop out:

• 58.8 percent of the students in the cohort who dropped out repeated at least one grade during high school and 37.4 percent repeated their freshman year.
• 42.2 percent of the students who dropped out were ninth and tenth graders aged 17-years old or older.
• 30.5 percent of the dropouts attended two or more high schools before ending their high school careers compared with 14.6 percent of the students in the cohort who graduated.
• 29.4 percent of the dropouts had attendance rates of less than 80 percent during the year before they exited school, compared with 2.1 percent of the students in the cohort who graduated.
• 65.2 percent of dropouts had attendance rates of less than 80 percent during their final year of school compared with 3.8 percent of graduates.

Fifty-five percent of the dropouts left school before the eleventh grade; 26.9 percent dropped out during the ninth grade; 28 percent dropped out during their sophomore year; 24.4 percent dropped out during the eleventh grade; and 20.7 percent dropped out as seniors.

Data presented in the cohort reports are disaggregated by student subgroup and includes updated on-time graduation rates and cohort dropout rates for the class of 2008.

Of Virginia's 313 non-alternative high schools, 178 had dropout rates below the state rate of 8.7 percent, 134 had dropout rates that exceeded the state rate and one school's dropout rate was the same as the state rate. Ninety-four high schools had dropout rates of five percent or less and 34 schools had dropout rates of 15 percent or higher. Eight schools reported no dropouts.

"Using the data from these cohort reports, educators and policymakers can now see where interventions are most urgently needed and identify high schools and school divisions that have developed best practices and strategies that others can emulate and adapt," Board of Education President Mark E. Emblidge said.

Last month, the Board of Education revised the commonwealth's accreditation standards to require high schools to meet an annual benchmark for graduation. The new accountability requirement will be phased in, beginning with accreditation ratings for the 2011-2012 school year. The board also voted to require schools to develop an Academic and Career Plan for every middle and high school student, beginning with students entering the seventh grade during the 2010-2011 school year.

In addition to these Board of Education policy initiatives, VDOE is focusing technical assistance to schools and school divisions on dropout prevention and related issues.

Hundreds of educators, administrators and community leaders from across the commonwealth attended the October 28, 2008, Virginia Statewide Dropout Prevention Summit in Richmond. The summit, which was sponsored by VDOE, included presentations from leading authorities on dropout prevention and educators who have pioneered successful interventions to keep potential dropouts in school.

VDOE is assisting school divisions this spring as they plan regional conferences to identify region-specific issues and strategies. In July, a VDOE-sponsored institute for Title I schools will focus on the practical aspects of implementing policies and practices — beginning in preschool and the elementary grades — to identify at-risk students and provide the support they need to experience success and complete school.

The calculation of cohort graduation and dropout rates is made possible by the development of VDOE's student data system, known as the Educational Information Management System (EIMS).

As school divisions enter data in the system, every student is assigned a unique, randomly selected number known as a "state testing identifier" that stays with the student through his or her career in the commonwealth's public schools.

The state testing identifier allows VDOE to follow students as they move from school to school and as they transfer in and/or transfer out of the Virginia public school system. Students who transfer into a school are added to the cohort of the receiving school and are subtracted from the cohort of the sending school. Division-level cohorts and the state-level cohort are adjusted in the same manner to account for student mobility.

Using each student's state testing identifier, the records of students who entered the ninth grade for the first time in 2004 were linked to their records over the past four years to determine their status and calculate cohort graduation, completion and dropout rates for schools, school divisions and the commonwealth.

"Virginia educators and data administrators have spent countless hours tracking down former students and documenting their current status," said Dr. Wright. "This has been a particular challenge in divisions with highly mobile populations, including students who divide their time between Virginia and other countries and sometimes leave the state without notifying school officials of their plans."

Cohort dropout rates reflect the number of students who drop out over the course of four years among a group of pupils who began the ninth grade together and differ from the division-level annual dropout rates traditionally reported by VDOE as part of the Superintendent's Annual Report.

An annual dropout rate is a snapshot for a single year, and because the denominator includes the total number of students in several grades or cohorts and is therefore larger, annual dropout rates appear "smaller" than cohort rates, which are calculated using a smaller denominator representing students in a single cohort.

High school cohort reports for schools, school divisions and the commonwealth are available for viewing and downloading in the Virginia School Report Card section of the VDOE website.

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