District presents on-track-to-graduate monitoring as part of 90% graduation goal; administration highlights early warning system and gains for underrepresented

The Anchorage School District presented a technical outcome-monitoring report Tuesday on college, career and life readiness, focusing on the percentage of students the district classifies as "on track to graduate" — a measure tied to course completion and credit accumulation.

Dr. Bryant, ASD superintendent, told the board the district has a board goal to increase graduation rates to 90 percent by June 2028 and that one key metric for tracking progress is the percent of students currently on track to graduate. "Currently, we're at 73.2," Dr. Bryant said, noting the district’s internally stated near-target figure of 75.5 percent.

Administrators displayed disaggregated data by grade level, race/ethnicity and other subpopulations, and emphasized ninth-grade performance as predictive: students on track as ninth-graders are statistically more likely to graduate on time. The report described that freshmen on-track progress has shown comparatively strong gains; Dr. Bryant said that in recent monitoring "the most pronounced gain that we just saw in the on track to graduate data was amongst our English language learners."

Superintendent Bryant outlined priority action steps districtwide and said the administration is implementing an early warning and response system to identify students who are not earning the credits needed to stay on track. "Implementing an early warning and response system... is an initiative that's new since we started monitoring this data point, and we can hold our staff accountable to doing these things," Bryant said.

The presentation noted the district will provide more detailed counts and percentages to the board in the coming weeks, including trendlines and disaggregated tables. Member Lessons and others asked technical questions about how the district updates the dashboard and whether credits applied retroactively can change prior-year figures; Lessons reported staff explained that the data dashboard is "quite live" and that retrospective credit posting can update earlier reporting.

Why it matters: The on-track measure informs the board’s multi-year graduation goal and determines which interventions the district prioritizes. The district connected gains in ninth-grade on-track status and expanded Advanced Placement access and Career and Technical Education (CTE) programming to overall graduation progress.

What the district plans next: Additional data releases with student counts and percent trends; coaching and accountability tied to the district’s priority action steps; and monitoring of early-warning system implementation.