How Does a School Scorecard Metric Affect Graduation Rates?
There are many national, state, and local assessments that provide evidence of student proficiency. The data and results have been utilized to determine if schools, as well as teachers, are successful in terms of providing students with adequate instruction.
Other strands of data are viewed as well to grade the overall success of learning institutions.
Some indicators of a particular school’s success may be: school graduation rates, course pass/failure rates, incident rates, attendance, growth rates of students on standardized test, standardized test results, post-secondary placement, job placement, or other factors.
Does a district focusing on several select indicators shape student performance? Does having identified goals, mission statements, vision, and desired outcomes help shape student performance?
There are many studies related to school policies, culture, climate, and best practices that produce outcomes in traditional school settings.
There are numerous school reform models, and many individuals work in consultancy roles for traditional schools. But there is very limited information and studies pertaining to how a school scorecard metric shapes student performance at an alternative school.
Other questions arise from this topic: Should alternative schools be judged by the same criteria as traditional schools? Should students who have not met with success in traditional settings utilize the same methods to shape their performance in an alternative setting?
The information that does exist on this topic, based on limited research, seems to be mostly quantitative in nature.
Quantitative information states that about 25% of high school freshman fail to graduate from high school on time. Almost 2,000 high schools across the U.S. graduate less than 60% of their students, and high school dropouts commit over seventy-five percent of crimes in the United States, according to the United States Department of Education.
The rising number of at-risk youths should be addressed, because non-productive citizens can place social and economic burdens on a society. This topic area may benefit from a qualitative research study that includes interviews and other qualitative inquiry methods to seek answers.
This issue is becoming such a societal problem that critical educational research may be an approach to consider, because the results may require those involved taking action.
The research design approach for such an investigation should focus on questioning and interviewing professionals who have experience working with at-risk youth.
The qualitative findings can provide information as to how these professionals determine if they have successfully shaped a student’s performance in several areas during their co-experience with each other.
These types of studies can help determine if a different metric is justified when assessing the performance of alternative schools and high school graduation rates.
This topic, while having qualities of a few common qualitative research designs, will primarily utilize the grounded theory. The grounded theory approach will provide a collection of data, which will contribute to building theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2015).
This approach “decides what data to collect next and where to find them, in order to develop theory as it emerges” (Glasser & Strauss, 1967).
If you are an education administrator, or involved with your local school board, and are interested in implementing these studies in your district, please contact Chicago Devotion for more information on how we can improve graduation rates in our city.
For more information about the Chicago Public School system, please visit their website at https://cps.edu/Pages/home.aspx.
Our children are our future, and we are dedicated to providing the best possible learning environment to ensure their continued success and increase local graduation rates.
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