Clinton High School is tightening its focus on attendance, academics, and student follow-up as it works to raise its graduation rate, which currently stands at 77.5 percent, ranking fifth among Sampson County’s six public high schools.
At the regular monthly meeting Thursday night, Principal John Green told the Clinton City Schools Board of Education that CHS has zeroed in on identifying and helping struggling students sooner rather than later.
“One of the key things for us is we have a process that we call our MTSS team,” Green explained, referring to the multi-tiered systems of support. “We’re taking a look at the whole school — attendance and academics, but we’re also looking at behavior as well. Each month we look at this data to see which students and which grades are doing what they need to do. The goal is early intervention so we can catch it before students get too deep and it hurts our graduation rate.”
The team reviews attendance and grades monthly and shares that information with teachers, asking for added context on each student’s situation.
“We ask, why are they failing? Is it because they’re not coming, or is it because they’re not doing well on tests and assessments?” Green said. “That helps us decide what kind of support a student needs and make sure we’re catching them before it’s too late.”
Green said another key factor is tracking where students go when they leave the school.
“We’re doing a better job making sure that when students leave, we know exactly where they’re going and that they’re enrolled somewhere else,” he said. “If we can’t confirm that, it counts against our rate as a dropout, so we have to keep up with them.”
Clinton City Schools Superintendent Dr. Wesley Johnson said the district is putting strong support behind Clinton High’s efforts.
“I definitely think we have the right man and staff there to turn the corner,” Johnson said. “We’ve spent a lot of time looking at our data, and Principal Green has now been in place for a full year. We’re working with the staff to ensure that we personalize learning as much as possible and keep students at the center of all decisions. By doing that, we create an atmosphere for them to be successful and work to increase that graduation rate.”
Johnson noted that maintaining accurate records is a challenge, especially when students move out of state or leave the country.
“Anytime a student leaves Clinton High and goes to another institution, whether in North Carolina or outside the state or country, we have to have documentation from that new school,” he explained. “It’s very important that when a student and family decide to leave, we stay abreast of their plans and follow up with the new institution so that student’s withdrawal doesn’t count against us.”
He said the process works smoothly within North Carolina, where schools share a unified data system, but it becomes more difficult beyond state or national lines.
“If it happens in North Carolina, we’ll get the documentation because schools reach out for transcripts and records,” Johnson said. “But when they go to other states or countries, it gets a little more cumbersome to keep up with that data.”
Despite the challenges, both leaders say they are optimistic about the future.
“It’s been years of a steady decline in dropouts,” Green acknowledged. “What we’re trying to do now is make sure we’re seeing the issues and acting on them. Attendance and course performance are the best indicators of whether a student might drop out, and we believe this focus will make a difference. I only see it getting better from here.”