(Wetzel)

1. (Wetzel) (Dropout Prevention) March 2013 NDPC SD and WVDE

2. Our County

3. Wetzel County, West Virginia • Want more? Browse data sets for Wetzel County   People QuickFactsWetzel CountyWest VirginiaPopulation, 2012 estimate16,4221,855,413Population, 2010 (April 1) estimates base16,5801,852,999Population, percent change, April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2012-1.0%0.1%Population, 201016,5831,852,994Persons under 5 years, percent, 20115.0%5.6%Persons under 18 years, percent, 201120.4%20.7%Persons 65 years and over, percent, 201119.8%16.2%Female persons, percent, 201150.9%50.7% White persons, percent, 2011 (a)98.8%94.1%Black persons, percent, 2011 (a)0.2%3.5%American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2011 (a)0.1%0.2%Asian persons, percent, 2011 (a)0.2%0.7%Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander persons, percent, 2011 (a)ZZPersons reporting two or more races, percent, 20110.7%1.4%Persons of Hispanic or Latino Origin, percent, 2011 (b)0.5%1.3%White persons not Hispanic, percent, 201198.3%93.0% Living in same house 1 year & over, percent, 2007-201189.4%87.7%Foreign born persons, percent, 2007-20110.9%1.3%Language other than English spoken at home, percent age 5+, 2007-20111.2%2.3%High school graduate or higher, percent of persons age 25+, 2007-201183.1%82.6%13.0%17.6%Veterans, 2007-20111,623166,372Mean travel time to work (minutes), workers age 16+, 2007-201130.125.5 Housing units, 20118,141881,752Homeownership rate, 2007-201179.4%74.3%Housing units in multi-unit structures, percent, 2007-20118.4%12.0%Median value of owner-occupied housing units, 2007-2011$81,500$96,500Households, 2007-20116,957740,080Persons per household, 2007-20112.372.43Per capita money income in the past 12 months (2011 dollars), 2007-2011$21,281$22,010Median household income, 2007-2011$37,673$39,550Persons below poverty level, percent, 2007-201115.6%17.5%   Business QuickFactsWetzel CountyWest VirginiaPrivate nonfarm establishments, 201036338,6761Private nonfarm employment, 20104,305560,4501Private nonfarm employment, percent change, 2000-2010-19.20.41Nonemployer establishments, 201072190,126 Total number of firms, 20071,017120,381Black-owned firms, percent, 2007FSAmerican Indian- and Alaska Native-owned firms, percent, 2007FSAsian-owned firms, percent, 2007F1.3%Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander-owned firms, percent, 2007F0.0%Hispanic-owned firms, percent, 2007F0.7%Women-owned firms, percent, 2007S28.1% Manufacturers shipments, 2007 ($1000)D25,080,573Merchant wholesaler sales, 2007 ($1000)14,39711,036,467Retail sales, 2007 ($1000)206,42720,538,829Retail sales per capita, 2007$12,539$11,340Accommodation and food services sales, 2007 ($1000)21,0222,553,258Building permits, 2011142,220   Geography QuickFactsWetzel CountyWest VirginiaLand area in square miles, 2010358.0624,038.21Persons per square mile, 201046.377.1FIPS Code10354Metropolitan or Micropolitan Statistical AreaNone 

4. Our Team • Debbie Novotny (Special Education Director) • Jessica Stine (Principal Hundred High School) • Bonnie McGlumphy (Special Education Teacher)

5. Starting Points (before the project) • Students with Disabilities (SWD) were the main ones to drop out. Regular Education Students dropped out, but the figures for the SWD population were far greater. Everyone in our building and at the county level were very aware of what was happening, but it seemed that no matter what we did we couldn’t solve the problem. Everyone, including parents, also tried to be involved in the graduation/dropout efforts.

6. NDPC-SD Technical Assistance Professional Development

7. Research • It was our intention to involve as many people as possible when a child came to us and told us they wanted to drop out. Usually, the counselor would counsel them and tell them what to expect if they dropped. Sometimes it mattered to the student. Other times, it didn’t matter at all. They just wanted out. • We discovered that if you showed the student you truly care…everyone on board…then drop outs began to decline. • Offering classes that the students could take online in half the time, or without the teacher they were clashing with, helped to significantly improve the drop out rate. • Rewarding students for doing the right thing may not be right, but it was right for them. They began to see the light at the end of the tunnel and started sticking it out. • Of course, there were those students that nothing helped and they continued to drop out. Most of them were regular education students.

8. Dropout Factors • Attendance and Truancy Prevention • Behavior • Course Performance-Academic Content and Instruction • Student Engagement • Parent Engagement • School Climate • The guidance counselor and I would go get the student…we have since brought the new principal on board with us. • We suspended students on a daily basis which is what they wanted. Now, we do ISS, which they hate, and behaviors have greatly decreased. • There are many students who still struggle. However, we are taking all struggling students in to the resource room and doing a reteach or using it for study time. It is working beautifully. • We are also utilizing virtual schools and credit recovery to help students reach graduation. • Some students are still not engaged and probably never will be. Some students, however, have started to be more and more engaged than we ever expected. Teacher expectations. • Parents are still a hard egg to crack but we are beginning to add food, as we can afford it, to the menu when there are parent/teacher conferences or IEP meetings. • The over all school climate has changed dramatically. Teachers are in the hallways greeting students and talking to them before entering the classroom. Teachers are intervening before fights break out. Teachers are also working on social skills across the curriculum.

9. Interventions • Praise • Reward Days • Social Skills across the curriculum • Peer Tutors • Use of resource room for all struggling students • Decreasing the volume of work assigned or test volume to help struggling students as well.

10. Key Data • 12-18 SWD were not engaged in math • 13-18 SWD were not engaged in RLA • 85% of SWD are below average and need interventions across the curriculum • 12 out of 25 SWD had discipline referrals (2011) • 64% Parents not engaged in the IEP process • 66% graduation rate for SWD (2011) • 10 out of 25 lack appropriate social skills (2011) • Out side school suspension had greatly increased (students knew which strings to pull) • Mastery on Westest math and RLA was almost on existant for SWD. Only about 50% of the regular education students were at mastery or above.

11. Initial Plan • Decrease OSS • Increase graduation rate • Social skills across the curriculum • Educate the teachers • Decrease behavioral referrals • Increase Westest scores

12. Plan Revisions • We kept with our initial plan. We felt that the school was so out of control, graduation and behavior wise, that we needed to keep those things in place. • We needed a baseline to work from as well.

13. Final Plan • To increase graduation rate • To decrease unwanted behaviors • To decrease absenteeism • To increase Westest Scores • To increase social skills • To increase RLA and math engagement • Educate teachers and give them some strategies and interventions to help SWD and at risk students. • Use virtual schools and credit recovery as much as possible.

14. Plan Evaluation and Adjustments • Phase I: Initial Plan • Phase II: Revised Plan • Phase III: Final Plan

15. County Developed Resources/Tools • As far as I know, we did not have any additional tools, forms, or resources.

16. WVDE: Cohort Document and Data • In 2010 and 2011 our SWD (at Hundred High School) graduation rate was below 70% • For 2012 we were at 100% • For 2013 and 2014 our projected graduation rate is 100%. • We have not reentered students, however, we have done virtual schools and credit recovery for those students who were not going to graduate. • We shared the cohort information as statistical info only. No names, grades, or disabilities were used. • The potential for the cohort information will be used to upgrade our system of keeping kids in school and getting them to graduate. • In 2015, I believe, will be the year for us not making AYP due to dropouts. We did not have the ammunition that we have today to keep those students in school. I believe the number of dropouts was 4 or possibly 5.

17. WVDE: Early Warning System Tool • The three primary indicators of the potential risk of a student dropping out of school are ABC: • Indicator6th Grade9th GradeAttendanceBelow 90%Below 85%Behavior1 or more suspensions2 or more suspensionsCourse Performance1 or more semester failuresFailing English Failing Math2 or more semester failuresFailing English Failing Math • How to Develop an Early Warning System • Setting up a data tracking system to determine which students are “on-track” and which students are “off-track” in reference to graduating on time, will inform educators who is most in need of interventions.  When a student has one or more of the ABC identified indicators (attendance, behavior and/or course failures)  then they are at-risk of dropping out of school.  

18. Schools and/or districts can set up systems to track students with these indicators.  Using existing tracking methods or establishing simple excel spreadsheets will assist in identifying and tracking these students.  Schools/districts can establish their own benchmarks by analyzing current data, use the benchmarks recommended in the Balfanz report found on this web site, or use a tool already created by the National High School Center (also located on this web site). • Early Warning System Tool • The National High School Center has an online excel tool that can be downloaded for free, to assist schools in setting up their own tracking system of early indicators.  They have created a template in MS Excel that is designed to make it easy for schools to enter the relevant information for their first-year students. • Virtual Course Catalog • The alarming statistics are all too familiar. Another student gives up on school every 29 seconds nationwide, resulting in more than one million high school students who drop out of American high schools every year. Nearly one-third of all public high school students fail to graduate from high school with their class. In West Virginia alone, students failed more than 25,000 courses in 2008-09. • The WV Department of Education is dedicated to reducing dropout rates and increasing graduation rates for students in West Virginia. To this end, the WV Virtual School is unveiling onTargetWV, a program that will allow students to recover credits they need for graduation and help them develop skills and work habits that contribute to their continued academic success. The newonTargetWV program offers rigorous credit recovery courses with additional scaffolding to sustain learning. These courses are engaging, interactive, and provide differentiated instruction to supply the extra support students need to be successful. An online instructor grades works, answers questions, and provides individualized instruction as needed. • Seats are now available to all schools statewide in the onTargetWV credit recovery program available through the West Virginia Virtual School. A listing of the available virtual courses can be found athttp://virtualschool.k12.wv.us/vschool/courses/crcatalog.cfm. The courses are instructor led and offer an adaptive release format that allows the student to work only in the areas that are needed. Each course has been reviewed for alignment with West Virginia Content Standards and Objectives. The cost for each course is $75 per enrollment.

19. More information can be found at http://virtualschool.k12.wv.us/vschool/courses/CreditRecovery.htm or by contacting Sarah Lyons at slyons@access.k12.wv.us (304-558-7880). • To register for courses, contact Gloria Burdette, at gkburdet@access.k12.wv.us or 304-558-7880 ext 53079 • • Attendance: Students who have missed either 10 percent of school days or 20 days total; • • Behavior: Students who receive two or more mild or more-serious behavior citations, which in most schools means detentions or suspensions; and • • Course performance: Students who struggle to keep up in key classes at different grades. • The last indicator varies at critical transition grades. A student who can’t read on grade level by grade 3, when students begin moving beyond basic literacy to read to learn, is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who reads proficiently. Failing English or mathematics during grades 6 through 9 increases the chance a student will never catch up. The systems also tend to flag more general academic struggles associated with dropping out, such as a grade point average of less than 2.0, two or more failing grades in 9th grade, or not progressing from 9th to 10th grade on time. • While many state warning systems do include state assessment scores, Mr. Balfanz, whose Everyone Graduates Center has helped districts and states develop early warning systems, said school-based grades have proved more popular markers for educators. “Grades are a cumulative thing: Did you attend, did you try, did you get your work in? It includes all of those things,” Mr. Balfanz said. “The evidence shows [annual state] test scores are really not as predictive at the individual kid level.” • RELATED BLOG

20. Visit this blog. • Flagging a student based on behavior can be problematic, the study found, because discipline policies vary so drastically from state to state and even school to school. Mr. Balfanz found that schools with “zero-tolerance” policies tend to have much higher overall discipline referrals, making it harder to tease out which students have the most severe underlying problems. He argued, however, that the number of discipline referrals will still predict students who are likelier to leave school, because “overreactive school policies” can prompt students to disengage. • Building Momentum • The momentum to develop and use these early warning systems has developed incredibly rapidly. While it usually takes a decade or two for interventions identified in research to translate into classroom practice, much of the research on dropout warning systems has come out in the last five years and researchers found that already 16 states have started producing regular early warning reports—and that’s not counting individual districts that have adopted their own systems. • Part of the impetus has come from increasing federal focus on increasing high school graduation. In the 2011-12 academic year, states, districts, and schools will for the first time be held accountable for their graduation rates based on a common federal metric in which cohorts of students entering 9th grade are tracked through graduation. • Yet the study shows that local businesses and community groups are also pushing districts to adopt early warning systems as part of grants or partnerships. • “There’s a sense of urgency in these local communities to get these things moving quickly,” Mr. Bridgeland said. Businesses and foundations in particular “were frustrated in grant-making [by] not getting sufficient feedback from school districts. They felt like they didn’t have the ability to understand the return on investment. ... [They] don’t want to wait for 10 years for a longitudinal study to show their investment is helping kids.” • The vast majority of the state and district early warning systems have been implemented only in the last year or two—not sufficient time to evaluate how well they are working overall—but the few that have been in place longer show promising results. For example, a review by the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse found that the Check and Connect early warning program, which targets middle and high school students with learning, emotional, and behavioral disabilities, reduced truancy and helped students stay in school. • http://wvde.state.wv.us/schoolimprovement/graduation.html

21. Use of Funds • 2011 I am not sure how this money was used. • 2012 We purchased 26 Nooks and one $250 Barnes and Noble gift card to buy student books. • 2013 During this school year, we bought 4 more Nooks, 6 sets of headphones, 5 iPods for rewards to SWD who had met a certain criteria, 2 $250 Barnes and Noble gift cards and we took the kids on a reward trip ice skating. The entire school was affected.

22. Data Trends-Graduation

23. While we did not have a drop out prevention plan in place in 2010 we saw the trend and was afraid that it was becoming a true trend with all students. We received a grant from Unlocking Potential (UP) that we believe started the whole thing rolling. There were rewards for attendance, behaviors, and grades. The kids loved it and began coming to school on a more regular basis on the premise that they may receive a gift card or special prize. In 2011 we received a Drop Out Prevention grant that took up where that grant left off but only for SWD this time. It has really made a difference with the students. Also, knowing that we can do Odyssey, Virtual Schools, and credit recovery for those students who are having personality clashes with their current teachers or who are, or have already, failed and will potentially not graduate because of this failure. Data Trends-Dropout

24. Moving Forward and Next Steps • Hopefully with these last funds we will be able to buy more iPods and earphones for rewards to SWD. • We will use credit recovery or Odyssey a lot more failing students. • Possibly some more Nooks will be bought as rewards for these SWD students. • We will sit down as a team and figure out where our next funds will be spent or how it should be spent.

25. Key Components of Plan Development • It is our belief that every teacher contributes their thoughts and ideas to how our plan should be developed. • Our team should then take those thoughts and ideas and sit down together and make out a plan using all contributions as part of the plan development.

26. Key Components for Maintenance • All parties, any one who is involved with the SWD students need to do their parts in following and carrying out the plan. • The principal should be in charge of making sure the plan is followed at all times. • If at any time the other members see that the principal is unable to complete his/her job then the team will step in to help so that things keep running smoothly with all students at risk but most especially with SWD students. • Keeping the momentum going should not be hard. Keeping the kids in school will be the hardest part, but with everyone working together and pulling together it can be done!

27. Lessons Learned • Students who drop out can no longer get jobs. • Students like to be rewarded, even if they are doing the right thing. • Students don’t react to punishment like we think they should because of the parental attitudes at home. • We need to use credit recovery more or Odyssey more. • Students respond better to virtual schools because they are the ones responsible for learning not us teaching them. It becomes their problem then. • Our greatest challenge is not letting any student slip through the cracks and become a statistic!

28. Contact Information • Debbie Novotny 304-455-4221 dnovotny@access.k12.wv.us • Jessica Stine 304-775-5221 jstine@access.k12.wv.us • Bonnie McGlumphy 304-775-5221 bmcglump@access.k12.wv.us

29. Thank you !