In 2005, Everett Public Schools (WA) found themselves with a "serious problem," in the words of Cathy Woods, director of on-time graduation. The district's graduation rate was 62 percent—a full 12 percentage points lower than the Washington state average.
It would be an understatement to say that Everett has improved this number over time. Today, Everett Public Schools has an incredible 95.9 percent on-time graduation rate.
What can we learn from their journey that we can take back to our districts?
To find out exactly how they got here, we chatted with Becky Ballbach, director of student services; Cathy Woods, director of on-time graduation; and Laura Phillips, director of MTSS-wellness.
Becky, Cathy, and Laura shared how they've shifted from "numbers to names" to ensure students' college, career, and life readiness, and how they're using Panorama to support each and every student. They also touched on how they are approaching the 2020-2021 school year given the shift to distance learning.
Can you give us an overview of Everett's journey to improve the on-time graduation rate?
Cathy Woods: Our focus on on-time graduation began in the early 2000s. From the school board and down, we noticed we had a serious problem. Everett had a 62 percent graduation rate in 2005 -- but at the state level, the graduation rate was 74 percent at the time. We knew we had to get all hands on deck because this was unacceptable and we were failing our children. It began with cleaning up our data. Where are the students going who are leaving our schools, and why are they leaving our schools?
We moved from a 62 percent graduation rate in 2005 to a 90 percent rate in 2015. Last year, our four-year graduation rate was 95.9 percent. It's been about making sure that it's about every single student, and it's all hands on deck. It is the number one goal in our strategic plan. A significant amount of time, energy, resources, and staffing has been invested to make sure that we are doing right by our students and reaching that goal.
Becky Ballbach: To build on that, our focus has gone from all students to each student. We realized that we needed to shift from just helping students walk across the stage, to helping them reach their future goals. The foundational goal that "all students graduate college and career ready" was expanded to "all students will graduate college, career, and life ready." And at the same time, it became obvious that our work towards this goal had to begin in kindergarten. With that, some of our systems expanded to include life skills components to help the student be prepared for graduation, post-high school, and life.
"Our focus has gone from all students to each student. We realized that we needed to shift from just helping students walk across the stage, to helping them reach their future goals. The foundational goal that 'all students graduate college and career ready' was expanded to 'all students will graduate college, career, and life ready.'"
–Becky Ballbach, Director of Student Services
I’ve heard you talk about shifting “from numbers to names,” which is so powerful. Could you explain what you mean by that and how you've made this part of the culture at Everett?
CW: The only way we could shift the numbers was by knowing that these are individual students with names and stories. To get our graduation rate to 95.9 percent, we needed to know each student, their story, the strengths they bring, and the needs that they have -- and then develop them so they not only graduate on time, but graduate ready for next steps. As part of the culture of our On-Time Graduation (OTG) meetings every week, we share success stories of our students rather than just talking about what we're doing or the actions we're taking. It's more inspiring to talk about individuals with names than it is to talk about high graduation rates. It's about the kids.
Panorama Student Success is one of the ways we can visualize moving from numbers to names. We can build individual plans around students, or we can see that we're not meeting the needs of an entire group of students and figure out what we need to change. Being able to monitor everything together is so helpful, in addition to being able to listen to student voice and move our system to meet their needs.
