Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour’s office, the Legislature, the state Department of Education and the Dropout Prevention Task Force are working together to implement a new plan to decrease the state’s number of high school dropouts.According to the 2000 census, Mississippi ranks 47th in the rate of high school dropouts and was 50th for American College Test (ACT) scores.
Director of the Office of Dropout Prevention Sheril Smith said the current graduation rate for the state is 61.1 percent.
The dropout prevention plan, which is scheduled to go into effect by the 2008-2009 school year, has three main goals, Smith said.
“The first goal is to increase the graduation rate for grades 9 through 12 to 85 percent by the 2018-2019 school year,” she said. “The second goal is to reduce the state dropout rate by 50 percent by the 2011-2012 school year, and the third goal is to reduce the state’s present truancy rate from 31.8 percent to 16 percent by the 2012-2013 school year.”
It is important for the state to address its educational issues because the level of education of the state’s citizens has a strong link to the state’s economy, she said.
“If we have citizens that don’t have the necessary skills to work in certain industries, then that adds to the overall economic impact to the state,” Smith said.
The plan is not only meant to reduce the state’s dropout rate from its current 26.6 percent but is also meant to help better prepare high school students to move forward into college, Smith said.
Several strategies will be implemented in helping to reach the goals.
“There are initiatives on the district level and state level to increase school safety, provide more counselors and provide alternative education,” Smith said.
A portion of the plan asks school districts to look at the specific problems needing to be addressed in the individual school districts, she said.
Kenneth Fountain, chairman of the Jackson County school board, said the district had an 82 percent graduation rate for the 2004-2005 school year, which is substantially higher than the overall percentage for the state.
“I think the reason Jackson County has such a success rate is the fact that all the way from the school board to faculty down to the students we are so focused on the curriculum and the success of students,” Fountain said.
“If we see students having problems, we don’t just ignore them. We recognize them and offer tutorial programs.”
Two types of tutorial programs are used in conjunction to help at-need students. The first uses certified employees to stay after school and help students one-on-one. The second uses an electronic media tutorial, Fountain said.
The board has also spent a great deal of money on GED programs to give some students an alternative to dropping out.
“A problem that our board has with dropout calculation is that those who have completed GED programs are not considered graduates,” Fountain said. “We have seen that about 40 percent of our students who obtained GEDs went on to continue their education through community colleges.”
Fountain said that despite Jackson County being one of the primary counties affected by Hurricane Katrina, the school district maintained a level five rating, the highest rating for schools in Mississippi. The county has maintained the level five rating for two years.
“We are the largest school district in the state of Mississippi to ever achieve that,” he said.
Jackson County is also the largest district in the state as far as student enrollment and one of the top nine districts in the state, he added.
“We are especially proud of that fact because Jackson County is a rural school. It’s not a big municipal school, and there’s a good diverse group of people,” Fountain said. “We have kids in class together that come from family backgrounds of one extreme of the financial world to the other.”
“Jackson County is very focused, and we only know one thing, success. We are all very committed to it from the board down to our students,” he said.