Schools work to keep students from dropping out

Larry Johnson, principal at Le Mars Community High School, isn't sure why 13 students in grades 9-12 dropped out last year, but he has some theories.

"That was a little bit up from the years before," Johnson said. "I would say a lot of these kids had issues outside of school. Some were involved in drugs and courts, had tough home lives and that type of thing."

Johnson expects the dropout percentage to come closer to 1 percent this school year as it has been in recent years compared to 1.8 percent in 2007-08.

"We feel one dropout is too many," he said. "We try to keep it down as low as we can and work as hard as we can."

One way LCS officials do that is by offering students who may not be doing well in a traditional classroom setting the opportunity to attend the district's Alternative High School.

Students there work on one class at a time, and after passing it with a 70 percent grade move on to the next subject.

"They work at their own pace," Johnson said. "We like to send kids as juniors and seniors because they have a better chance of making it through."

During the 2007-08 school year, 12 students graduated from the Alternative High School with an alternative diploma, which is based on the classes they have completed.

"Some of them do quite well down there," Johnson said. "It's really helped keep our dropout rate down."

LCS officials also try to help students who aren't succeeding at the Alternative High School by getting them into a GED (General Educational Development) program.

Along with LCS, Kingsley-Pierson Community School District also experienced a high number of dropouts for its school -- four -- during the 2007-08 school year.

As a result of that, this year K-P began offering a credit recovery program that gives at-risk students options other than a traditional classroom setting.

"If somebody fails a course twice or is in dire need of credits, they can earn credits they need for graduation," said Scott Bailey, superintendent. "The goal is to prevent dropouts."

Other smaller school districts around the county reported one or zero dropouts among their students.

Both Hinton Community School and Akron-Westfield had one student dropout last year while Remsen-Union and Gehlen Catholic Schools had none.

Sue Martens, high school principal at Hinton Community School, said the one dropout there last year was one too many.

"We try really hard to keep our kids in school," Martens said. "We work with the students and the parents."

The Hinton School District, working with Sergeant Bluff, offers a Flexible Learning Center much like LCS' Alternative School.

"It's tailored to meet the needs of kids who just can't make it in the public setting," Martens said. "That helps them to succeed and to graduate."

Jeff Alesch, principal at Gehlen Catholic Schools, said there has been only one student dropout there in the last seven years.

"That's been our trend," Alesch said. "School and higher ed. is certainly important to them."

That seems to be the case across Iowa with the statewide dropout rate at less than 3 percent, according to Elaine Watkins-Miller, Iowa Department of Education spokeswoman.

The number of dropouts is up slightly from previous years, but that was in part due to a new student tracking system that allows the state to track individual students their entire academic year, she said.

"We still have one of the top graduation rates in the nation, and one of the lowest dropout rates in the nation," Watkins-Miller said. "It's certainly a priority statewide to provide an education that really does try to provide support for students that are in danger of dropping out."