Intervening with Troubled High-School Seniors

(Originally titled “Operation Graduation”)

In this article in Educational Leadership, Virginia principal Laura Hebert describes how her 1,800-student high school supported its highest-risk seniors toward graduation. During the 2011-12 school year, the leadership team realized that a number of students were in danger of not graduating and gathered data on these risk factors:

• Five or more absences in the first quarter;
• One or more 10-day out-of-school suspensions;
• Failure in English or another core subject;
• Insufficient credits on state tests;
• Economic disadvantages;
• Eligibility for special education or ESL;
• An incarcerated parent, a recent parent divorce, etc.

When Hebert projected the data on a conference room wall, she and her colleagues were “dumbfounded” to see that fully one-third of seniors had at least one factor. Driven by the data, the school launched Operation Graduation and went to work with students in three groups:

• Green – These students had only one risk factor, and the school homed in on that factor – for example, with excessive absences, they met with the parent to find the reason and formulate a plan to meet graduation standards. 

• Red – These students had more than one risk factor and were second-year seniors. “It was apparent that many of them needed an intervention outside the traditional graduation route,” says Hebert, so the school organized GED classes, Job Corps, or another pathway.

• Yellow – These students had multiple risk factors and the usual interventions weren’t working. A dedicated school counselor was assigned to them and, if discipline problems were involved, an administrator monitored their progress. But Hebert believed the “red” students needed something more. At the next faculty meeting, she displayed photos of all 46 students and asked if a teacher would stand up and be a mentor for each one. By the end of the meeting, every student had a mentor and there was a waiting list of disappointed teachers who didn’t sign up fast enough. Mentors did everything from calling students at six in the morning to accompanying a student to visit her father in prison. 

By June, 42 of the original 46 students in the mentoring program walked across the stage as on-time graduates, and the remaining four graduated that summer.

The following year, the school identified 42 seniors for mentoring, and at the meeting when their names were announced, “teachers arrived early and sat up front so they wouldn’t miss the chance to be a mentor,” says Hebert. Eighty-one percent of these students graduated on time in June of 2013, and the remaining students were scheduled to graduate in August. The school also identified 25 juniors for a new O-Tiger program, monitored their progress carefully, and held monthly meetings.

“Operation Graduation” by Laura Hebert in Educational Leadership, September 2013 (Vol. 71, #1, p. 57-59), www.ascd.org; Hebert can be reached at Laura_Hebert@ccpsnet.net.

From the Marshall Memo #502