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External View of the new
Harlan County High School
See more images of the
Harlan County High School here.

HCHS expanded class offerings, new opportunities result in substantial dropout rate decline, graduation rate increase

   The Harlan County School District has significantly decreased its dropout rate and increased its graduation rate, according to non-academic data released Tuesday by the Kentucky Department of Education.         

    “These are outstanding numbers,” said Superintendent Tim Saylor. “These reflect tremendous gains for Harlan County High School, showing that many of our programs and activities are impacting students and keeping them interested in staying in school.”

    Harlan County’s graduation rate increased from 72.34 percent in 2008 to 77.98 percent in 2009, said Saylor. “The dropout rate decreased from 5.66 percent in 2008 to 2.06 percent in 2009. While Harlan County’s graduation rate increased, statewide a slightly lower graduation rat e was reported.

    “This is a substantial improvement and a great accomplishment for Harlan County High School, said Saylor, noting the data for 2009 is for the first year of instruction at the consolidated Harlan County High School. 

    “This report is for the first year HCHS was open. The 2008 data was for our three high schools which closed -- Cumberland, Evarts and James A. Cawood. All three of our schools were among the worst in the state’s dropout data in 2008.”

    Saylor, responding to questions on the turnaround in the data, credits the new high school and its numerous programs and opportunities for keeping students interested in school. Saylor said impacting the improvements are a wide variety of elective classes offered at HCHS, along with dual credit classes, e-school, JRTOC, music and fine arts, career and technical education and many others.  The students didn’t have these opportunities prior to bringing them together on one campus in our new building. The bottom line is that HCHS is a success story. The statistics are now proving this. We are successfully transitioning students into college and the workforce.

    According to Saylor, only one senior dropped out of HCHS in 2009.

    “And, while we are pleased with the improvement, we will be doing even more in our attempt to see that see all students graduate from school. Our goals for 2009 are greater than 2008. We want all of our students to be able to respond proudly about completing their education when asked in 5, 10 or 15 years, ‘where did you graduate from high school?’”

    Saylor said that as underclassmen become more involved at the school, “We are confident that our graduation rate will be even higher next year.”

    “Success starts with the leadership of the school,” said Saylor. “Mr. (Bob) Howard has done a tremendous job as principal of supporting these factors that have such significant impact. I commend everyone at HCHS, the school district and community who played a part in lowering the dropout rate while increasing the graduation rate.

     Statewide, data from the 2008-09 school year show that Kentucky's public school students had slightly lower graduation rates than those in the 2007-08 school year, and dropout rates improved during the same time period.

     The graduation rate decreased from 84.52 percent in 2008 to 83.91 percent in 2009. Kentucky began reporting graduation rate data with the 2000-01 school year to comply with requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. Because NCLB requires that graduation rates not include students who received certificates of completion and those who took longer than four years to graduate, a more rigid formula to determine the rates was adopted by the Kentucky Board of Education in 2002.The 2001 and 2002 rates include students who received certificates of completion and those who took longer than four years to graduate. Rates collected after those years include only those students who finished high school within four years and those students with Individual Education Plans (IEP) that allow more than four years to graduate.

    The overall high school dropout rate decreased, from 3.29 percent in 2008 to 2.89 percent in 2009. Dropout rates for nearly all ethnic groups decreased from 2008 to 2009, with those for African American, Hispanic and Native American students showing the greatest improvement.

    Nonacademic data has been one component of the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS), which was ended by the passage of Senate Bill 1 in the 2009 session of the Kentucky General Assembly. However, graduation rates are required to be reported under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, and schools and districts are held accountable for meeting annual goals for graduation rates through NCLB.

    In the past, all Kentucky schools and districts were required to meet the same annual graduation rate goals, and any improvement from year to year was considered to have met the U.S. Department of Education’s requirement of “continuous and substantial improvement.” Final regulations and a peer review by the agency earlier this year indicated that “any improvement” was not sufficient to meet the federal requirement, and the state was required to set targets for minimum improvement from year to year.

   For this year’s data release, for the purposes of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) calculations under NCLB, growth on the graduation rate means a rate that is equal to or greater than the corresponding annual goal; or, a graduation rate that exceeds that of the prior year by a minimum of 2.00 percentage points. The graduation rate goal for 2009 is 86.75. This change will be reflected in the September 2010 No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress reports.