Archive: Around Town

New Roots Charter School reported a 51% four-year graduation rate for the 2010 cohort in the 2013-2014 Accountability Plan Progress Report.

Stating bluntly that the graduation rate was 'unacceptable,'” New Roots Principal and Superintendent Tina Nilsen-Hodges emphasized that it is an historical anomaly created by the unique composition of the cohort.  In sharp contrast, New Roots is projecting a 75% graduation rate for the 2011 cohort.  Seventy-one percent of the 2008 cohort and 67% of the 2009 cohort graduated in four years.

Eighty percent of the 2010 cohort did not start high school at New Roots, and that impacted four-year graduation rates, Nilsen-Hodges said.  The five-year graduation rate for the 2010 cohort will be 69% if nine students who started at New Roots late and are still enrolled graduate in June 2015.  Only 40% of this year’s senior class has been at New Roots less than four years, which may account for the projected 50% increase in the four-year graduation rate for the 2011 cohort.

“The school’s commitment to providing all students with a ‘second chance,’ even late in their high school careers, has obviously depressed our four-year graduation rates,” said board chair Jason Hamilton.

A graduation (or total) cohort is the group of students who entered ninth grade in September of the same year.  Any student who enrolls in a school and stays for at least one day is part of a school’s graduation cohort unless they leave and enroll in another public or private school, homeschool, or start post-secondary education before earning a high school diploma.  The cohort is identified by the year they entered high school.  

“Our graduation cohorts are very small – between 34 and 66 students – so every student counts for 2-3 percentage points,” said Nilsen-Hodges, adding, “The rules and metrics were developed to measure outcomes of large district high schools, not the outcomes of a very small and unique regional charter high school serving students who live in 22 districts in the region.”  

New Roots Trustee Joe Wilson, a high school principal in Baltimore and at Ithaca High noted, “What caused me to join the Board here was that I could see how hard and quickly the entire staff was moving to adapt their methods to support the more challenged students. So, while I join everyone associated with the school in finding these results disappointing, I am very much encouraged by the adaptations which have been made, the number of non-graduates who have stayed on to graduate in their fifth year, and the projections of graduation rates going forward.”

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