On Jan. 19, The Gazette published an article about the Pikes Peak regionís graduation rates, citing data from the Colorado Department of Education, which placed Falcon School District 49 at the bottom of the 17-school-district list, with a graduation rate of 58 percent. The list also states the dropout rate for the district is the highest, at 9.4 percent.In the Pikes Peak region, Manitou Springs School District 14 had the second highest rate with 93.7 percent; Cheyenne Mountain School District 12 followed with 93.4 percent. The largest district, Colorado Springs School District 11, had a graduation rate of 69.7 percent.What happened in Falcon?Amber Whetstine, executive director of learning services for D 49, said the numbers are correct but do not necessarily compare apples to apples. ìA large percentage of our high school students attend GOAL Academy, which is a statewide online school,î she said. ìIt has about 4,000 students, and the majority of them do not necessarily reside within District 49 boundaries.îWhetstine said GOAL Academy and Patriot High School are both alternative schools, with a student body largely made up of students who would not be attending high school if only given the traditional high school option. PHS is focused on helping high-risk students, or students who are the most at risk of failing high school, Whetstine said. Ultimately, those high-risk students would not be successful without the opportunity to attend one of the alternative high schools, she said.ìAbout 60 percent of our high school population attends GOAL Academy or Patriot High School,î Whetstine said. ìThat highly impacts our district-wide average.îTaking into account only the traditional high schools, the districtís graduation rate is over 85 percent, which is well above the state graduation rate of 79 percent and comparable to the surrounding districts, she said. ìFalcon High Schoolís four-year graduation rate is 87 percent,î Whetstine said. ìSand Creek High Schoolís is over 80 percent and Vista Ridge High Schoolís is 87 percent.îIn coming years, Whetstine said the district could see another impact on four-year graduation rates because of the districtís Pikes Peak Early College, which allows seniors to stay enrolled for up to two more years to earn an associate degree. Students do not graduate in four years; they graduate in six, but with both a high school diploma and a post-secondary degree, she said.ìThe idea of graduating in four years may not be as relevant as it was in the past,î Whetstine said. ìSome students graduate early with certificates to start their careers.îThe appropriate way to analyze graduation rates in D 49 is to look at individual schools, she said. Each school serves the needs of their student base in different ways, Whetstine said. Some schools are geared toward high-risk students, and other schools have students who do not graduate in four years because they are taking advantage of the PPEC, she said.Similarly, dropout rates are skewed in part because of the alternative schools in D 49, Whetstine said.ìDropout rates are calculated based on any student leaving the district within a school year and not enrolling in another Colorado school, or enrolling in one that cannot be tracked by the state,î she said. ìSprings Studio for Academic Excellence is another high school that had only 50 graduates in 2017. That number is too small to report to the CDE because of privacy laws, but our data shows that schoolís graduation rate is still 85 percent.îStudents may also leave the district and then come back, but the CDE does not always track them as being re-enrolled, she said. Serving a high-risk population like D 49 does certainly affect the dropout rate reported by the state, Whetstine said.While the data at the CDE might seem discouraging, Whetstine said both rates are single data points that need to be considered in context, rather than on their own.
