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Thompson School District reports 80% four‑year graduation rate; officials outline dropout and midyear assessment trends
Summary
District presenters said the four‑year graduation rate for the 2023–24 cohort was 80%, below the statewide 84.2%; officials described falling dropout rates, subgroup disparities and midyear I‑Ready results that show growth in many grades but persistent gaps for students multiple grade levels behind.
Thompson School District officials presented the district’s 2023–24 graduation, dropout and midyear I‑Ready results at the Feb. 19 Board of Education meeting.
“Our current graduation rate for the 23‑24 school year was 80 percent, while the state's was at 84.2 percent,” said Theo Robison, executive director of secondary education, summarizing the districtwide four‑year graduation rate and noting variation across student groups and high schools.
Robison said the district has recorded three straight years of decreasing dropout rates and remains below the statewide average. He highlighted an 11.6 percentage‑point increase in Ferguson High School’s graduation rate and increases for some racial groups, while noting declines for white, Hispanic/Latino, Black/African American and some multiracial groups.
“[Dropout] is when our students enter seventh through twelfth grade, and a dropout is a student who leaves our school without enrolling into another school or an education program,” Robison said, explaining the metric the district tracks.
Carrie Bartman, director of assessment and evaluation, explained the midyear I‑Ready diagnostic results used to project performance on state metrics and college‑readiness indicators. Bartman described how the vendor renormed assessments to post‑pandemic baselines and walked the board through K–8 reading and math achievement and growth charts.
“Each of our grade levels falls into high performance, high growth,” Bartman said of reading growth measures, adding that math national norms now place typical growth around the 56th percentile. She also noted areas that concern district leaders: “There are 909 students that are currently three or more grade levels below reading.”
Board members pressed staff on follow‑up measures. Robison said the district is revising credit‑recovery and unit‑recovery programs and expects continued decreases in dropout rates as counselors and staff guide more students into Ferguson’s alternative pathways. He also said the district is piloting and considering adoptions for elementary literacy curriculum and pointed to ongoing professional learning community work intended to strengthen interventions.
On questions about homeschoolers, staff clarified that students who are formally end‑dated for homeschooling are not counted as dropouts in the district’s calculation. Board members asked the administration to return with remediation and college remediation rates; Robison said the district could provide that data within about a week.
The presentation concluded with a reminder that the numbers reported feed the state and district performance frameworks used for accreditation and accountability next year.
