The Power of Rainbows....

As I left my office and walked down the hallway the other day I was struck by a very familiar sound literally bursting out of one of the English classrooms. It was a loud, almost brash voice filled with enthusiasm and what was being said was punctuated by raucous laughter. Rather than being unsettling, it was surprisingly comforting...Lisa Doyle was back! Back where she belongs among adoring students, energizing them and filling them with appreciation for literature and poetry, symbolism and simile, and the difference between a comma and a semicolon. For the last six and one half months Nancy von der Heyde has done an exceptional job filling some incredibly big shoes. She worked tirelessly to implement the curriculum and push her students to excel, knowing all along that some parents and students were less than thrilled she was in the classroom rather than Mrs. Doyle. Yet, she persevered and we all owe her an immense debt of gratitude. So now Mrs. Doyle is back, thankfully healthy and ready to finish out the year. We had a brief ceremony at lunch on Thursday to thank Ms. von der Heyde and welcome Mrs. Doyle back and, of course there was cake, a few moving student speeches, and lots of cheering and applause. Seemingly, all is right in our little CHS world! Pinned to my office bulletin board I have a photograph of the rainbow that magically appeared at a soccer game last fall on the day the school honored Mrs. Doyle. It depicts Mrs. Doyle standing triumphant, arms raised as if in defiance or in victory. From this day forward my view of rainbows has been forever altered. For the rest of my life every rainbow I experience will remind me of how fortunate we all are and that miracles do indeed occur. Welcome back, Lisa!

As if that excitement were not enough, we have a wonderful, new district web page! Months in the making, it was launched last week and, while it clearly is a work in progress, it is a tremendous improvement over what we have had for more than the last decade. Powered by Finalsite and the result of a significant amount of work on the part of our District Technology Director Deb Morgan, the new site is bright, colorful, and very polished. It is both artistic and functional, displaying lots of photographs of students engaged in learning on a number of levels as well as updated school news. It is also highly interactive and over the next several months plans include populating the site with a number of opportunities for students and parents to access and download forms and other information in a convenient manner. So if you get a chance, check it out at www.chatham.k12.ma.us and give us your honest feedback. Is there something that is missing or is there a link that might make your school experience easier or better. Please let us know because we are sincere in our aim to make this page your "go to" site for everything you need or want to know about the Chatham Public Schools.

So Spring arrives tomorrow and things are looking up at Chatham High School. It is hard not to be optimistic. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know how you feel.

Figures Lie and Liars Figure....

A week ago the Cape Cod Times published an article about the apparent success of vocational schools in maintaining high graduation rates which is excellent news. The article based its argument on the data provided by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and generally did a pretty good job of explaining a complicated calculation process that is used to derive an annual percentage. The problem is that the paper did what it usually does with education data. It created a chart ranking all of the area high schools so everyone could make comparisons. That in itself is fine, however in order to be useful, data has to be accurate and it really should be presented in context. First the accuracy. I cannot speak for the other schools, but with regard to Chatham's data, they used the district's figures, not those ascribed solely to the high school. The actual graduation rate for Chatham High School is actually 81.4, not 79.5, not a big difference, but it suggests a general sloppiness in dealing with data which raises questions. Secondly, and more important, the chart they created only lists the graduation rate for 2009 and 2010 for comparison purposes when it would have been far more helpful to identify where all of the students in the four year cohort who did not receive a diploma ended up. In our case, three students from the cohort are still in school in a post-grad vocational program (in fact, two have just received their diploma), two left school and acquired a Graduate Equivalency Diploma (GED), and three did, in fact, drop out. All of this information is readily available on the DESE website and would have presented a much clearer picture of just what the data really means. Furthermore, had they dug a bit deeper, they would have discovered that the DESE clearly understands that, for some students, an extra year is necessary to successfully earn a diploma which is why they also provide data based on a five year graduation rate. In that scenario, our graduation rate climbs to 87.9 or 91.7 if one looks at the adjusted cohort rate. As it was presented, the article with its comparison chart seems to suggest that those who were not included in the graduation rate statistic were drop outs which clearly reflects negatively on a school that has a figure that is less than 100%.

I write not to justify our graduation rate. We know we can and should do a better job ensuring that students stay in school. We certainly try to do that using various intervention strategies, counseling, and flexible scheduling, and, when students ultimately decide they want to leave, we do as much as we can to ensure that they enroll in a GED program. There are, however, two realities with which we deal on a daily basis at CHS. Most schools today are dealing with an increasingly transient school population and often CHS is seen as a small, personalized school where a disaffected student from another district might finally meet with success. That is often the case in seventy to eighty percent of students we admit from other schools and districts. However, we also admit students for whom no school is going to be the panacea to help turn things around. They come with their parents' high hopes and within a few months realize that while we are small and personalized, we also have high expectations for all studentsand hold them accountable. Often that pressure is what turns out to be the tipping point and, unfortunately, another student becomes a drop out.

Perhaps the next article that appears in the Cape Cod Times will not only present the correct data but will do so in an appropriate context so that the public can draw correct assumptions about the performance of area schools. In the meantime, we will continue to do the best we can to meet the needs of all of our students and help them accomplish the goal of earning a Chatham High School diploma.