TDHS seeks mentorships

The grassroots group formed last year with a goal of improving graduation rates and test scores at the district.

Nelson is working with grassroots chair Travis Hillman, who has emphasized the importance of vocational/technical classes when he was a student.

Mentorships would be especially beneficial for seniors who have more time in their schedule to go to a work site on a daily basis, Nelson said.

Nelson also said the high school is expanding its career and technical education (CTE) offerings next fall, adding four to six construction modules into the woods program at the high school.

Class offerings will include wood shop 1 and 2, and construction 1 and 2.

That will take the woods program from the vocational/technical category to the CTE category, which will make the school eligible for federal funding, Nelson said.

The federal CTE funding helps ensure programs are up to date and in line with the needs of business and industry.

Other CTE programs include automotive, welding, graphics and IT classes.

Nelson said a student who takes one CTE class is 14 percent more likely to graduate, and 20 percent more likely to graduate if they take two CTE classes.

“The CTE program is critical,” Nelson said.

The high school is working to improve its graduation rate, and has seen steady gains in recent years. Its latest graduation rate, from 2014-15, is 68.3 percent, up from the 64 percent posted the year before, and well up from the 59 percent in 2012.

The state graduation rate is 74 percent.

The school’s transition in the 2015-26 school year to a trimester format, from the previous semester format, has provided dividends in student performance, according to Vice Principal Kurt Evans.

Evans said typically about 200 students out of the 800 at the high school get As and Bs every grading period. With the

introduction of the trimester, that went up to 300, and held there throughout the year.

On the low end of the grading scale, about 220 to 240 students typically got one or more Fs every grading period under the old semester system. This year, with trimesters, the number of students with one or more Fs went from 170 first trimester, down to 165, and then 132 in the final trimester.

Of the 300 students with As or Bs, two-thirds are girls. Of the students with Fs, two-thirds are boys, he said. “It’s been that way a long time,” he said.

He said the main reason the school is pushing the CTE programs is to balance out the gender split in who gets As and Bs and who gets Fs.

Most students in CTE programs are boys.

“It’s not all about these kids who are going to college,” Nelson said. “That sounds like anathema,” he said, but there are also students who want to go right into a career after high school.

The school is also expanding its Advance Placement offerings, adding AP chemistry and AP macroeconomics in the fall. Now, 153 students have signed up for AP.

Nelson said students last year took 1,400 credits through AP, Expanded Options at the college, and the welding class, which happens at the college and earns students college credit.

“We’re doing a good job of giving these kids opportunities and holding these carrots out for them,” Nelson said.

Columbia Gorge Community College waives tuition for students who graduate with a 3.25 or better GPA.

The school board also heard information about the high degree of mobility of students in the district. The district has a higher than state-average rate of students who transfer in and out of the district, and officials speculate that could be a factor in lower graduation rates.

The class of 2014 had just 130 kids who were in the high school all four years. In 2015, just 118 kids were in the class from start to finish.

The typical class size is around 200 students.

That means it’s not accurate to say all students are products of the local school system.

District Superintendent Candy Armstrong said she didn’t know why the district had such a “big turnover.”

Nelson described students who arrive senior year, but don’t have the necessary credits to graduate on time. One student, who is homeless and couch-surfing, was just a half a credit shy of graduation If a student moves away and a new district doesn’t request their transcript, that counts against The Dalles as a student who didn’t graduate.

Board member Lori McCanna asked if the state’s system of measuring graduates was flawed.

Armstrong said it was, but the state chose to use that system, even though it puts Oregon in a bad light compared to the rest of the country.

“We are unique in the way we took the [federal] law and interpreted it,” Armstrong said.