GPRA 4. Graduation rate (four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate ).

As of 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (24 CFR 200.19(b)(1)) requires all states to calculate a four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate for all public high schools in the State. The adjusted cohort graduation rate is recognized as an accurate and uniform way to compare graduation rates across all states.

Definition. Each State must calculate a four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate for all public high schools in the State. The four-year adjusted cohort rate is defined in 34 CFR 200.19 (b)(1) as:

“The number of students who graduate in four years with a regular high school diploma divided by the number of students who form the adjusted cohort for that graduating class. For those high schools that start after grade 9, the cohort must be calculated based on the earliest high school grade. The term ‘‘adjusted cohort’’ means the students who enter grade 9 (or the earliest high school grade) and any students who transfer into the cohort in grades 9 through 12 minus any students removed from the cohort. The term ‘‘students who transfer into the cohort’’ means the students who enroll after the beginning of the entering cohort’s first year in high school, up to and including in grade 12. To remove a student from the cohort, a school or LEA must confirm in writing that the student transferred out, emigrated to another country, or is deceased."

“To confirm that a student transferred out, the school or LEA must have official written documentation that the student enrolled in another school or in an educational program that culminates in the award of a regular high school diploma. A student who is retained in-grade, enrolls in a General Educational Development (GED) program, or leaves school for any other reason may not be counted as having transferred out for the purpose of calculating graduation rate and must remain in the adjusted cohort. The term ‘‘students who graduate in four years’’ means students who earn a regular high school diploma at the conclusion of their fourth year, before the conclusion of their fourth year, or during a summer session immediately following their fourth year. The term ‘‘regular high school diploma’’ means the standard high school diploma that is awarded to students in the State and that is fully aligned with the State’s academic content standards or a higher diploma and does not include a GED credential, certificate of attendance, or any alternative award."

“In addition to calculating a four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate, a State may propose to the Secretary for approval an ‘‘extended-year adjusted cohort graduation rate.’’ An extended-year adjusted cohort graduation rate is defined as the number of students who graduate in four years or more with a regular high school diploma divided by the number of students who form the adjusted cohort for the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate, provided that the adjustments account for any students who transfer into the cohort by the end of the year of graduation being considered minus the number of students who transfer out, emigrate to another country, or are deceased by the end of that year.”

Data comes from the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (Administrative Data).

Click Here to access or upload your Data Plan and approved targets.

Sources of Strength (Middle and High School):

Juneau - community partner NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) implemented a Sources of Strength group at each high school. In addition to the regular program sessions, SoSt students also participated in several community events, helping to raise awareness for mental health needs in their community.

Credit Recovery (High School):

During the school year credit recovery options take many different forms and are more easily reported as policies and opportunities than they are as a specific, trackable student count. For example, teachers allowing for late work or make-up assignments is not a reliably trackable metric. In terms of policies, over the pandemic teachers have been encouraged to give students opportunities to improve on poor grades. (This policy also helps foster a growth mindset; we can learn from our mistakes.) Other opportunities that allow students to make up for missing credits include access to dual enrollment courses and flexible online learning through platforms like Plato. For example, teachers in Angoon worked closely with one student this spring who needed to make up credits in order to graduate. Her housing is unstable - she moves between Angoon and Anchorage–  and it was a challenge for her to complete her coursework. This student met with a teacher every day during the spring and took online classes through Brigham Young University to make up credits.

The alternative high schools in Juneau (Yaakoosge Daakahidi)  and Sitka (Pacific) also specialize in flexible, trauma-engaged, and engaging options for students so they can work toward graduation.

Mental Health Supports (K-12/ Systems-level):

Hydaburg invited Native presenters to speak with all classes about suicide, bullying, and mental health/ wellness and invited tribal partners to work with students. However, there are high reports of mental distress.

In Juneau, NAMI continues to implement the Social and Emotional Health Education Program with middle school students, which focuses on building awareness and skills for improved mental health outcomes. After the initial 4-week program, students requested to have more mental health discussions, and the program was extended for the rest of the school year. It started up again with the new school year this fall. In addition, NAMI facilitates several presentations for middle and high school students, including “Signs of Suicide,” “Positive Protective Factors,” “Mental Health vs Mental Illness,” “Adolescent Brain Development” and CHOICE Camps.

ROCK Juneau partners with Bartlett Regional Hospital (BRH) to support the Hello BABY program, which offers support to families of infants with prenatal substance exposure. BRH was awarded a $100,000 annual contract for 3 years from our state health agencies starting in 2021 to be one of two pilot study stations for AK Plans of Safe Care (“Hello, BABY”).  BRH is expanding universal support for all pregnant people. Support from ROCK includes: co-creating/launching a survey in late 2021 to assess community attitudes toward opioid use, development of the feedback survey in use with patients, refocusing social media posts to include de-stigmatization messaging around parenting and opioid use, orientation and introductions to the myriad of community agencies who offer support to families and children, and logo development that has resulted in an online presence for Hello BABY. Outreach to local medical and mental health providers is going strong.

Angoon is working with Center for Community’s Early Learning Program to pilot an expansion of the Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation model to reach Kindergarten and 1st grade families. The K/1 teacher and families receive Mental Health Consultation from a Mental Health Specialist. Through this partnership, Angoon is now able to provide continuity to their mental health support for children from preschool through 1st grade. Due to COVID, the consultant has been providing virtual and phone support but will begin to travel to Angoon again next spring.

In Sitka, the Sitka Youth Leadership Group (SYLC) participated in a panel on mental health, followed by a Mental Health Awareness Month campaign throughout the month of may. These two activities reached about 800 middle and high school students.

Regional: In November several students from Southeast Alaska STEPs communities participated in a youth leadership institute hosted by AASB. They were able to speak to school board members and meet other students statewide to identify key areas of interest and action. Students served on a panel and presented their primary concerns. Mental health was a key area of concern for students. This ended up informing the AASB Board of Directors 3 legislative priorities 1) Mental Health Services for Students; 2) Retention and Recruitment of Educators; 3) funding for schools.

Mental Health Supports Workgroup (Regional/ Systems-Level):

The Mental Health Supports workgroup met regularly through the spring and early summer, focusing on how to expand professional learning for mental health professionals on culturally affirming mental health services, and building capacity for mental health consultation/reflective consultation. We collaborated with the Alaska Alliance for Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (AKAIMH) to organize and offer STEPS partners access to a 1.5 day Reflective Practice Institute, aligned with the STEPS annual gathering in May. 12 Participants from STEPs communities participated in the Reflective Practice and Reflective Leadership Cohort. The training was held virtually, but STEPS partners gathered together to login as a group for the second half day. This partnership was the launch of an on-going cohort that will be working together to create support for educators and youth program providers to support mental health consultation and spaces to navigate difficult situations facing students and the caring adults working with them.

After a break for summer and staffing transitions, the mental health workgroup resumed meeting in November, and refined the focus on culturally affirming mental health services with a goal of collaborating to support development of place-based/plant based SEL and wellbeing curricula. The workgroup will continue meeting regularly throughout the next year, with a half-day session planned for May 2023. 

Youth Leaders (Middle and High School):

Hydaburg students participating in the Tribal Governance class learned about tribal leadership and job opportunities. They also discussed the issues facing their community and school, and their understanding of tribal sovereignty and of self determination. In the spring, 10 students completed projects on issues pertaining to Indian country as well as pertaining to their understanding of their own community. The conversations were rich and powerful. They also were able to interview two tribal council members and engage in multiple discussions with community members. In the fall, the class had 4 students. The success and engagement of this class prompted the creation of a Student Council for Hydaburg School, which includes a representative from each grade (10 students). The Student Council began in the fall and meets weekly.

In Juneau, AWARE’s community coalition Haa Tóoch Lichéesh has been building capacity to increase Black Indigenous People Of Color and LGBTQ2S, students vulnerable to suicide. HTL created spaces across school sites by establishing and facilitating a LGBTQ2S+ Youth Working Group that typically meets biweekly for 120 minutes to identify ways to provide visibility and support for LGBTQ2S students, both within and outside of school settings. In partnership with the Zach Gordon Youth Center, they have created The Alliance, an afterschool program for LGBTQ2S+ youth and allies to socially gather, participate in activities, and build community within the schools. The program is open to 6th-8th grade youth and is currently present in both middle schools coordinated through the Zach Gordon Youth Center. Students from the Youth Working Group, The Alliance, and other Haa Tóoch Lichéesh programs also participated in various leadership workshops including the Rise Up! Youth Conference, Tlingit and Haida’s Youth Summit, Pride, and an indigenous college and career fair.

The Sitka Youth Leadership Committee (SYLC) continues to meet, train, and promote youth leadership, healthy relationships and masculinity. Peer educators also provide presentations to local middle and high school students.

Drug-Free/Opioid Prevention (Community-wide/ Systems-level):

Hydaburg hosted several presentations for a variety of audiences aimed at preventing and reducing drug and alcohol use and abuse. Information presented was tailored to speak to the impact of drugs and alcohol on Native communities.

Juneau - ROCK Juneau and Hello BABY are assessing community attitudes about opioid use as they continue efforts to address the issue. Hello BABY is also designed to prevent a parent’s history of opioid and substance misuse from impacting a child by working with parents of newborns to develop plans of safe care. The program is actively working to destigmatize opioid use in the community so that families will seek help when they need it.

Sitka - Sitka Counseling, which is part of the Sitka Pathways coalition, received a second Drug Free Communities grant. One of the primary approaches under this grant is upstream prevention. Youth and family-focused prevention activities are coordinated through the Sitka Pathways Coalition. For example, The Cloud (teen center) is opening back up with support from Sitka Counseling and Youth Advocates to staff the center, and teen nights are being offered again at the Hames Center Gym – both are healthy after school activities for youth. The Sitka Youth Leadership Committee (SYLC), which is hosted by SAFV, continues its work fostering leadership through peer education and campaigns such as the Healthy Masculinity campaign launched earlier in the year. Sitka Counseling has been offering LGBTQ+ support groups at Sitka High during lunch and has about 10 students participating. Other direct interventions to address opioid use are coordinated through the Hope Coalition, including counseling sessions at Mt. Edgecumbe High School about the harms of substance use. Students who participate in this group are usually mandated by their school because of an infraction.

Graduation rates seem consistent, with small changes from year to year. Persistent gaps among Alaska Native, American Indian, and 2+ race students (“AKN2+”) compared to white counterparts as well as less economically advantaged students remain:

Again, there is significant overlap between the AK Native population and low income population in our STEPS communities. Economic standing seems to be more important for graduation.

Unsurprisingly, alternative high schools (which serve high-risk students) and urban schools graduate a smaller percentage of eligible students each year, while small rural schools have higher graduation rates. The exception is Yakutat, which saw a low graduation rate compared to other rural schools. STEPS AK staff have reached out to Yakutat school staff to discuss (and are also working closely with Yakutat staff on postsecondary planning - see GPRA 5.1).

While many of the STEPS activities reported on in other GPRAs will have an impact on graduation rates, we choose to report on a few key activities that specifically engage high school students and support their mental health under this GPRA:

Credit Recovery specifically works to help students receive the credits they need to graduate, however, as credit recovery efforts have expanded since COVID, and are often more informal, partners have largely stopped tracking and reporting on these efforts in terms of individual students reached.

Some successes:

• Increase in Mental Health Supports. Hydaburg, Sitka, Juneau, and Angoon continue to expand mental health supports offered to students. NAMI has significantly expanded their program reach, from serving about 300 students in 2021 to reaching over 1300 students in 2022. The mental health supports workgroup continues to make progress.
• Depth of Programming. Community agencies such as SAFV, AWARE, Tlingit and Haida, and NAMI continue to engage students in deep ways. While they may not always reach a majority of students in their communities, those that they do reach report high levels of engagement, satisfaction, and perceived effectiveness.
• AASB’s Youth Leadership Institute and Youth Advocacy Institutes saw high participation from STEPS communities. STEPS partners worked to connect students to scholarship opportunities so that they were able to attend these two events focused on building youth leadership and youth advocacy skills. In addition to these programs, AASB hosted a new event this year to train students to serve in a formal role on a school board. Sitka has 2 youth representatives on their school board, and Juneau has one - all 3 representatives participated in AASB’s leadership opportunities.

Some Challenges:

• Shortage of Mental Health Providers. The local (and national) shortage of Mental Health providers means that even when issues are identified and referrals are made, students can still sometimes be waiting months to receive services.
• Difficulty connecting community-based work with school system - Community-based organizations and schools have been short staffed, have experienced high turnover, and have been focused on supporting kids through urgent mental health challenges that have been exacerbated by the epidemic. These three factors have made it all the more difficult to foster the relationships and set-aside the time needed to integrate community-based supports into the school system.  
• Competing demands - Adult staff are often volunteers, and have other roles competing for their time. It can be hard for staff to prioritize work that seems like “extra,” and because this work doesn’t always have systemic support, this can be a major challenge. Youth also have competing demands for their time, and attendance at afterschool or weekend youth leadership programs can be inconsistent. With increased food costs and other expenses more students are needing jobs to support expenses.

Work towards building a conceptual model for mental health consultation across the K-12 system. This strategy has primarily been used in PreK/Early childhood so far and with some successful pilots in Juneau and Angoon. Working to identify best practices and developing a plan for supporting potential consultants to hone the necessary skills can help to scale up this model, which allows for integrated mental health supports even with limited mental health providers.

Understand and strengthen the links between academic support, mental health, and postsecondary preparation programming. Having plans for the future is a protective factor. High school counselors have often had to choose between the urgent demand of providing social and emotional support for kids in crisis, pressing deadlines associated with enrolling students in courses, and the longer-term, less urgent work of supporting future planning efforts. It’s not surprising that future planning work often gets short shrift. However, there is growing recognition that having plans for the future is a protective factor that can support mental health. For example, one freshman who had attempted suicide as an 8th grader shared that she now has a whole new outlook after her small engine repair teacher connected her with a job at local automotive shop. She loves her work and is hoping to own a shop herself twenty years from now. AASB and STEPS partners have been striving to help foster future planning conversations by weaving them into social and emotional and trauma engaged school planning, family night activities and leadership opportunities like the Youth Leadership Institute. This video highlights some of the reflections shared by students after reflecting on the Finding Your Future reflection prompts.

Strengthen Regional Youth Leadership Efforts. In partnership with Spruce Root and Sitkans Against Family Violence, STEPS is hoping to engage in a process of collecting youth leadership best practices from around the state in order to increase the quality of this area of programming. Trainings will be developed, as well as a statewide PLC focused on youth leadership. Some areas of focus include culturally responsive programming and linking youth leadership programs to academic learning and post-secondary planning.