SYRACUSE – The Wawasee School Board feels its students are succeeding perhaps despite the best efforts of the state.
The board has been looking at trends in student retention and success during recent meetings, and most recently heard that graduation rates have exceeded the state average. Last year also marked a six-year high in graduation percentage for Wawasee, according to figures Corporation Data Technician Bob Cockburn presented Tuesday.
Wawasee saw a 91.7 percent graduation rate at the end of the 2010-2011 school year, beating the previous year's rate by 8.3 percentage points and the state average by 6 points. Wawasee’s graduation rate has been rising for the past six years, the extent of the numbers Cockburn presented -- up from 70.4 percent in 2006.
The jump between 2010 and 2011 is the largest in that period. The state average only saw a 1.3 percent increase in the same time.
Wawasee’s dropout rate in that time was 3.6 percent – about half the previous year’s rate – while the Indiana average was 6.1 percent, down by only 0.3 points.
“Take that, Tony Bennett,” Cockburn remarked. Bennett is the state superintendent of public education, and many school corporations have been critical of his leadership amid decreased funding and increased mandates.
Cockburn added the numbers put Wawasee well into the top half of schools in the state. A quarter of the 171 schools in the same category as Wawasee saw a graduation rate increase of at least 5 percent, he said.
He further broke down the class of 2011 into categories such as gender and race, showing a higher graduation percentage among girls than boys – 94.1 percent to 88.8 percent – and among self-paid-meal students compared to free-and-reduced-price-meal students.
Free/reduced-meal students, a segment comprising close to half of the class and growing, achieved an 89 percent graduation rate compared to 96.1 percent among other students. They also outperformed the state graduation rate in their category by 10 percentage points.
“If we see a low area, we ask what can we do to get the numbers up,” Cockburn told the board. “We don’t want to lose any kid.”
