Northview High School’s graduation rate for 2020 could decline 16 percentage points as the result of a state audit that examined schools with a large number of students who withdrew to home school.
The school is located in Brazil and is part of Clay Community Schools.
Northview Principal Chris Mauk says that more than 40 of the students now counted as dropouts were the result of a clerical error, and seven of the students were due to insufficient credits earned.
In the case of the 40 students, a wrong form was used, he said, but it’s the school’s understanding that no further documentation can be submitted.
That problem will be corrected in the future, Mauk said. “I don’t see the paperwork being a problem again.”
According to Chalkbeat Indiana, more than 1,000 Indiana students who left high school without diplomas could be counted as dropping out “after a state audit cracked down on districts using a legal loophole” that inflates graduation rates.
The state audited 104 schools, and Northview was one of those.
This is the first time the Indiana Department of Education audited schools under a new law designed to ensure the state is accurately tracking how many students drop out. Schools had originally categorized these students as withdrawing to home-school, which would have left them out of graduation rates, according to Chalkbeat Indiana, part of a nonprofit news organization that reports on education.
“The state added back students whose home-school withdrawals weren’t properly documented or those who had fallen behind on credits. The review found that nearly 60% of home-school students audited were behind on credits when they left school, suggesting that many of those who leave to home-school may essentially be dropping out after struggling to pass classes,” the article stated.
There is now an appeal process, said Pete Miller, a member of the Indiana Board of Education. “If these schools want, they can appeal. This is the initial audit finding. We haven’t officially made any changes” to graduation rates, he said Tuesday.
Graduation rates are one component of a high school’s accountability grade.
State legislators and others have “suspicions” that some schools may have used the withdrawal to homeschool provision of the law to avoid counting students as dropouts; if those students are counted as dropouts, it reduces a school’s graduation rates, Miller said. But officials “don’t have proof of” those suspicions, he said.
The hope is the new audit process will decrease use of the legal loophole and prompt schools to work even harder to keep students in school, potentially through alternative options, he said.
According to Molly Craft, State Board of Education spokeswoman, the audit took place due to a 2019 change in law that required the State Board to identify schools whose use of the home school exit code for their graduation cohorts exceeded a statutory threshold. “Of particular interest were those students who were designated as withdrawing from public schools to be homeschooled who were also not on track to graduate,” she said in an email.
The basic findings are that 104 schools exceeded the threshold set by statute, she said.
In the Vigo County School Corp., South Vigo’s graduation rate would drop 2.7 percentage points and West Vigo High School, 3.7 percentage points, according to the audit.
Bill Riley, VCSC director of communications, said that when a student wants to leave school to be homeschooled, “We have an obligation to counsel them, and that counseling is walking them through all of their options as well as reinforcing the importance of education and talking with them about why school is a good place to be, then asking questions about their home school plan.”
After the district has done that, “Only then can we withdraw them to home school,” he said.
VCSC “works really hard to make sure our withdrawals to home school are actually withdrawals to home school,” Riley said. “We want to be on the right side of this because we don’t want an inflated graduation rate; we want to be accurate.”
Keeping in touch with students once they withdraw to homeschool “can be very difficult,” he said. “We try checking in with them and making sure they are succeeding, making sure they don’t want to come back to school because we believe our school is the best place for them and can give them the best chance of making progress toward graduation.”
Vigo County’s small drop in graduation rate “is reflective of the work we try to do on the front end to really try to identify if a student is withdrawing to home school or dropping out,” Riley said.
Nearly all the schools that were reviewed will see their graduation rates fall, with a median decline of about 7 percentage points, according to Chalkbeat.
State Sen. Jeff Raatz, R-Richmond, said some schools have taken advantage of the loophole to inflate their graduation rates, for example, if a student close to graduation is several credits short of what is needed to graduate. In some cases, schools have counseled students to withdraw to homeschool.
“That’s not every school. But the suspicion was that some schools were using that to preserve their graduation rate when they knew a senior wasn’t going to graduate,” Raatz said.
He recently spent some time with a school district and learned some of the challenges districts face. “At the end of the day, for myself, it brought everything to the surface.”
“There is no silver bullet in all this,” Raatz said.
He learned of one example in which a student who entered a school district as a 12th grader had less than 25% of credits needed to graduate; after a week, the student withdrew to home school, and now the school is having to count the individual as a dropout.
Another example might be a parent who becomes tired of fighting with a student who refuses to attend school; instead, the parent withdraws the student, purportedly to home school — even though there is no intent to do so. Other friends of that student may follow suit.
“A lot of times it’s not the school’s fault,” Raatz said. “Are there times when students fall through the cracks? I think the answer is yes.”
He foresees some changes administratively to address some of these issues when circumstances may be beyond the district’s control.
The hope is that schools will work even harder to keep these high school students in school, using whatever tools or alternative programs are at their disposal. “The General Assembly is willing to work” with them, he said.
It is the state’s desire “to see students come out educated and prepared to work in the workforce and become productive individuals,” Raatz said.
Use of the loophole to inflate graduation rates has been a serious issue that needed to be looked at, he said. “Now we got the spotlight on it and we can work together to try to come up with other ways to fix it.”
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