Escambia County School District uses graduation coaches to help high school students stay in school and earn their diplomas. Clockwise from left to right: Laura Touchstone, Pine Forest High School principal; Jesse Wolfe, graduation coach; Maghen Gardner, Pine Forest counselor; and Kelli Lowe, Pine Forest counselor. (Photo credit: Isabella Lee, Pine Forest High School).

School districts across the country are working hard to increase graduation rates by developing programs designed to help students at risk of dropping out.

Given the litany of reasons that students decide to leave school, the use of graduation coaches has proven effective in keeping students on track to graduate from high school in four years.

The Escambia County School District last year hired four graduation coaches to work mostly in high schools with the largest numbers of at-risk students, which included Pensacola, Pine Forest and Escambia high schools. Coaches periodically provide help the remaining district schools — West Florida, Washington, Northview, Tate and alternative schools — as needed.

Among them is Holly Busse.

“It’s important for us to determine what a student’s needs are,” Busse said. “We want to find out the barriers that prevent them from being successful.”

The high school graduation rate is one of 16 benchmark metrics that the Studer Community Institute measures in the Pensacola Metro Dashboard. Developed with the University of West Florida, the dashboard is a snapshot of the educational, economic and social well-being of the community.

Over the past decade, Escambia’s graduation rate had gradually inched up a few percentage points a year. In 2015, the graduation rate spiked 6.6 percentage points to 72.7 percent, an all-time high since states began using new, uniform federal rate calculations.

Escambia County schools Superintendent Malcolm Thomas credited the graduation increase to the growth in career academies in middle and high schools, an investment in summer and alternative education programs and a greater emphasis on high-risk students through the use of coaches.

Helping fill in the cracks

Graduation coaches identify at-risk students and find ways to help them overcome their deficiencies.

As part of the district’s improvement plan, they will:

— Work with students who are identified as “at risk” for dropping out of school.

— Provide data analysis on students being served by programs both inside and outside the school.

— Keep a record of students being served.

— Work closely with students and family members.

• — Provide resources and offering support to students and teachers.

The coaches meet regularly with their students to review their transcripts and grades, reminding them that they must earn at least seven credits a year to graduate.

For some students, the coaches might recommend tutoring or other services. The coaches work with classroom teachers to help students make up work.

They constantly check up on students, make sure they’re going to class, doing their work and not getting into trouble.

Using graduation coaches is not a new phenomenon in education.

Georgia was among the first to hire coaches on a large scale when Gov. Sonny Perdue put then in place statewide in 2006. He credited the program with a 10 percent decrease in high school dropouts in Georgia for two years in a row.

Georgia’s statewide average rose to 78.8 percent in 2015, up more than 6 percentage points higher than the previous year.

Florida, with a graduation rate of 76 percent this year, doesn’t have a statewide program involving graduation coaches.

Hiring them is a district-by-district choice.

Thomas said the Escambia County School Board in the first quarter of 2015 approved his plan to hire four graduation coaches.

In addition to seniors, coaches spend extra time working with ninth-graders to help them and their families put plans together and set goals to finish school on time.

“This is another adult other than a guidance counselor focusing on student achievement and success,” Thomas said.

Principals, counselors or the coaches themselves identify at-risk or struggling students by analyzing data in the student information system.

A low grade point average, a shortage of course credits or chronic absentees are warning signs that students are in trouble of failing school.

Often, the students have fallen through the cracks and simply need one-on-one attention to help get them back on track.

Cleaning up the data

The essence of what a graduation coach does, Busse says, is build relationships with students, their families and the schools.

Pine Forest High School Principal Laura Touchstone said the coaches are successful because they are visible in the schools, and they let the students know they care.

“This is the one thing this year that we’re working on that is really changing the culture,” Touchstone said. “Our focus is on academics.”

Pine Forest’s graduation rate is among the lowest in the district at 68 percent, up 4 percentage points from 2014. Less than half of at-risk students graduated in 2015.

Touchstone said administrators and teachers are working to change the culture with a heavy emphasis on academics.

They put together a professional learning community that focused on graduation. School counselors, principals and a group of teachers meet once a week put in an action plan to help the school move forward.

Students are expected to come to school, remain in class, teachers instruct bell to bell, and parents should be engaged, she said.

“Our focus is on learning, changing the culture, and really engaging the student in the classroom,” Touchstone said. “We want students to be able to model what they’ve learned.”

Jesse Wolfe said his primary role in his first year as a graduation coach at Pine Forest was to “clean up data” to ensure that students are properly tracked through the system.

“We started digging into the data and making sure students who leave Pine Forest and go to another school are coded right,” Wolfe said. “That positively affects Pine Forest graduation rate.”

Access to correct data districtwide is essential, so graduation coaches worked with the state’s school improvement specialist, the district’s technology specialist, and the school’s registrar to make sure that the student enrollment and withdrawal codes are accurate.

Those efforts have uncovered instances where students were mistakenly coded as dropouts and counted against the school’s graduation rates, when they had actually graduated or transferred to another school.

Cleaning up the data can make a significant difference in the graduation rate calculation.

Thomas said the district want make sure that a student who started at a school in the ninth grade but left for another school in another district or state is coded correctly.

“Sometimes we miss students by plugging in wrong data,” Thomas said. “Using data, we can figure out where they are and get the coding right.”

Whenever a student withdraws from school or transfers to another district or state, there are specific codes that the state education department uses.

If a student enters an adult program or receives a GED, schools must track of that student so that he’s not counted as a dropout.

“We’ve been working closely with data specialists and records clerks to follow up with those students,” Busses said.

Thomas would like to hire enough coaches for every school, but right now he’s satisfied with the work the four coaches are doing by spreading their services around the district.

“Let’s work on that data and get it right,” Thomas said. “The district is good right now with four coaches, but of course if we had more they could help more students."

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Students entering 9th grade 2012-13