Among the 8 largest school districts in Ohio, Cleveland ranked 6 th in high school graduation rates with 66%.
The Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s graduation rate has jumped 10% from 2010 to 2014, but it’s still well behind the national average of 82%.
During a Monday night forum hosted by ideastream, John Bridgeland, author of “Dropout Nation”, talked about some focus groups he conducted around the country. He said those conversations with high school dropouts helped lead to a big discovery.
“The dropouts told us they wanted more personalized learning, more project-based learning,” Bridgeland said.
Cleveland Metropolitan School Distrcit CEO Eric Gordon says they’re working on keeping kids engaged.
“In our schools today, every principal is expected to be able to know whether a child is on track, whether they’re off track because of their graduation test, whether they’re off track because of credit, whether they’re off track because of graduation test or credit combined, or whether they’re off track because they vanished,” said Gordon.
9 of Ohio’s 55 lowest performing schools are in Cleveland. But Bridgeland says efforts like the 2012 Cleveland Plan to improve the city’s schools puts Cleveland on the right track to fix the dropout problem.