Complacency is the Enemy

Over the past two months I have been fine tooth combing our School Performance Framework (SPF) or in layman's terms, our school rating. There are actually two rating systems, the State of Nevada's report and the Washoe County School District's report. The state report supersedes the district report meaning no matter what your district score is, it cannot be higher than the states. For example, you could have enough points to be a 4 Star school on the district rating but if the state has you at 3...you are a 3 Star school. Both ratings are chalk full of various statistics tied to a point scale ultimately determining a star rating ranging from 1 to 5.

So here we sit with a 4 Star rating for the second year in a row. What does it mean and where do we go from here. Areas to celebrate are: 

-We graduate 87% of our students-3rd year in a row

-50% of our students on IEP graduate with a regular diploma-district is 27%

-11th grade performance on the AP Exam is up from 79% to 85%

-49% of our graduates have an Honors or Advanced diploma

-We also saw gains in our first time proficiency test pass rates in science

Last month I spent a day with a group of staff analyzing our data. From that work session we were able to identify 3 key areas to focus on:

-Our sophomore students are struggling to pass their core classes. 10th graders typically pick up an academic class in place of their Freshmen Seminar support class, which they take in 9th grade. We suspect we have some sophomores who could benefit from additional support. Based on district data, only 43% of our sophomores passed ALL their core classes. Perhaps a Sophomore Success class is in order for certain students as well as an inquiry into the causes of the failures, (tests, homework, etc...).

-College Readiness is measured by Advanced Placement participation and performance. We score pretty high on performance (39% of graduates pass at least 1 AP test), but our district score suggests we need participation by more students. To address this issue, we added AP Pyschology this year and will be adding AP Geography and Computer Science next year. We want to incrementally provide more AP choices throughout our school day for students ready for the challenge.

-Finally, we want to continue to support our special populations of English Language Learners (ELL), special education students and students receiving Free and Reduced Lunch. We also want to be mindful of how specific demographic groups are performing. For example, we graduated 72% of our Hispanic students last year-down from 78% the year before. Right now though, only 48% of our Hispanic students are on pace to graduate-based on credits. This means these students need to catch up and may be part of our sophomore struggles. We are using a graduation initiative grant of over $55,000 to provide proficiency test after school support along with credit recovery options. We have hired a bilingual parent involvement staff person. Finally, we are continually modifying and improving how we provide special education supports at Reno High.

Make no mistake, we are a great school with a strong tradition of educational excellence. The challenge ahead is to be forward thinking and proactive about our work. The goal is to constantly improve. For me, it's not about the stars, it's about the students. Our urgency must be to self-assess and improve year to year. With a school like ours it is important to remind ourselves...complacency is the enemy!