KHS credits dedicated staff for consistent graduation success

KELLOGG — Kellogg High School has been making strides in the education department for the last few years and now the results are really beginning to show.

Since the beginning of the 2013-14 school year, the Idaho State Department of Education has adopted a four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate and recently released their state graduation rates for the 2017-18 school year.

Kellogg High School has improved dramatically over the last few years and for the 17-18 school year, when the state average for graduation rate was 80.7 percent, KHS moved on 95.2 percent of their seniors (79 of 83 students).

KHS principal Curt-Randall Bayer believes the consistent increase is due to an emphasis from the school’s administration and staff to make sure that the students simply can’t fail.

“For academic purposes, students who have a D or an F grades require them to attend academic support at lunchtime,” Bayer said. “Teachers voluntarily give up lunch time to work with students to improve grades. Although we have used this model in the past, the 17/18 school year was the first time we had students work on improving both D and F grades. We have also implemented the use of block schedules in our weekly schedule.”

To put KHS’s graduation rate into perspective, West Bonner School District (Priest River-Lamanna High School) had a 68.4 percent graduation rate (or 54 of 79 students).

Bayer also credited the work of retired instructor and former senior class adviser Wayne Pfeifer for spending additional time with students and parents about their credit statuses.

The school district also makes sure to keep tabs on any students who withdraw from KHS to confirm their next school or education destination, as well as make sure that they stay in contact with the State Department of Education if there are any discrepancies in how the state is reporting.

“Over the last two years, we generally have two meetings per month where teachers meet in grade level teams to talk about possible improvement strategies to support student success,” Bayer said. “With the size of our school, we can maintain close connections both formally and informally through our homeroom and academic support programs and quick check-ins with students everyday.”

The adjusted cohort graduation rate tracks ninth-graders through all four years of high school.

The cohort is adjusted to account for students who move to or from another district, leave the country or die.

The four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate measures the number of students who graduate with a regular high school diploma in four years divided by the number of students in the adjusted cohort.

Here are the year-by-year results for Kellogg High School (KHS results on top, state averages below):

13/14 14/15 15/16 16/17 17/18

85.1 85.9 81.1 83.3 95.2

77.1 79.2 79.2  79.7 80.7

This last year the Mullan School District reported 100 percent graduation rate (7 out of 7) and Wallace Jr./Sr. High School graduated 90.7 percent of their class last year (39 of 43 students).