Article submitted by James Master, The Pilot News Managing Editor
WALKERTON — On Dec. 30, 2022, the Indiana Department of Education announced the 2022 graduation rates for the state overall and for each school. Overall, the State of Indiana saw 86.61 percent of its students from the Class of 2022 graduating. From that list, there were about nine schools that graduated 100 percent of their senior class.
John Glenn School Corporation (JGSC) was one of those schools.
When asked when this last happened in school history, Superintendent Christopher Winchell and John Glenn High School Principal Chris Manering said that it hasn’t happened in recent school history.
“I can tell you specifically since 2007, when I got very involved with the school improvement work here at John Glenn, we’ve never had 100 percent graduation rate,” said Winchell.
“Graduation rate is an indicator of one of the things that you’re doing,” Manering said. “Our goal is to graduate kids in that four-year period and then to get them ready to go into the next avenue whether that be college, the workforce, a vocational school, the military, whatever it may be. Trying to get those kids ready for their next phase in their life. And when you have kids graduating on time, then they don’t have to come back for a fifth year.”
Superintendent Winchell identifies that schools need to be fiscally responsible, but that doesn’t mean that schools should operate like a business. “We can’t spend more money than we’re bringing in, no budget can survive that. But we’re not a factory creating widgets. We’re not an ice cream company developing blueberry ice cream… If we’re an ice cream company making blueberry ice cream and we get a truckload of spoiled blueberries, we would send the spoiled blueberries back to the farm and say ‘no, you have to send us a truckload of fresh blueberries.’ In high school, we take every freshman who shows up on our doorstep, the first day of freshman year, and then we are graded, we are evaluated, on how we move that group of freshmen from 9th grade through commencement.”
In the education world, a cohort is a group of students that are educated at the same time, such as a grade level or graduating class. The superintendent went on to say that “any kid that comes into that cohort gets added to our cohort and we get evaluated on that kid even if they move in senior year from out of state. We’re still evaluated on if we got that kid to graduate in those six months, he was here with us.”
For instance, if a freshman enters the cohort from another school system and isn’t academically where they need to be at, it’s the school’s role to get that student caught up with their peers. “We’re expected to get them graduated in four years regardless of if they come to us not prepared,” said Winchell.
Students leaving a school corporation also provides challenges when it comes to graduation rates. Winchell explained that there’s a strict set of rules from the State of Indiana that schools have to follow including having the proper documentation to remove the student from the cohort.
The drive to obtain a 100 percent graduation rate began about 15 years ago. Superintendent Winchell said that when he came to John Glenn, he was told to dig into the data to find out why John Glenn High School kept receiving a D grade from the State. “One of the obvious data issues, when we started looking into that back in 2009, 2008, 2007, was our graduation rate was less than 87 percent. A good rural school was producing a graduating class of less than 87 percent. So, when we dug into that some more we figured out was the same thing I just said. We have kids coming to 9th grade, for whatever reason, who don’t have the full skill set and we were just trying to push them through high school curriculum. We were missing the piece of we may need to remediate some math deficits, we may need to remediate some reading deficits.”
Once they identified that missing piece, the corporation took action. In order to help students get back on track, the high school developed remediations and interventions that includes math and English labs for students that need remediation in those areas. They also created a program called credit recovery. “If a kiddo flunked a class, they were able to then make up that class in a computerized form,” said Winchell.
Since taking action, JGSC has risen from the 87 percent graduation rate to the middle 90’s. “Under Mr. Manering’s leadership the last few years, they’ve added some other interventions, they’ve added some other remediations that I think have been the catalyst to take us from that 95 percent to then this crazy achievement of 100 percent of the kids,” Superintendent Winchell said. “So, I’m really excited about this because Chris (Manering) has been here since 2014-2015. He’s been an amazing teammate, been the athletic director, been the assistant principal, and now sits at the principal chair. His team had some really neat initiatives that they put in the last couple of years that took us from that 95 to that 100.”
When you speak to Superintendent Winchell about the graduation rate, you can tell that he’s very proud of the corporation’s achievement. “I’m passionate about it, I’m excited about it, I’m a little wound up about it because I remember back in 2007 when we highlighted this as an issue. And so proud at the growth that we made. But now, being in the superintendent’s chair and seeing Chris and his team achieve this 100 percent graduation rate. This has really been a 15 year school improvement goal in the making and we really think here at John Glenn that we ought to be able to get every kid across the stage. I’m excited to see it all come to fruition.”
Adapting to a student’s particular way of learning has helped in obtaining 100 percent graduation rate. “Everybody’s got a different learning style. Some kids are auditory, some are visual, some kids are hands on, some kids have to get up and move around. Some kids flat out just can’t handle distraction. They sit in a room and there’s just too much going on so they can’t focus. And some kids need that old fashioned one room school house,” said JGHS Principal Chris Manering.
The principal explained that if students qualify for the high school’s alternative education program, the students “work in a smaller setting more with a John Glenn teacher and they’re kind of helping them in more of a computer guided program to earn their credits. And then a lot of times we’ll have them go to a vocational program, work, something like that to earn some more elective credits. But when they get out of that mindset of ‘I got to sit in that classroom and do that’ and they kind of get one-on-one, then it works a lot better.”
Making sure that students graduate in a timely manner benefits not only the student, but also the community as a whole. “Because at the end of the day, a lot of these kids are going to stay local, they’re going to get jobs, they’re going to pay taxes. And they’re going to be members of our community and they’re going to have a family and their kids are going to come back through John Glenn,” said Manering.
Other programs that have been developed to help students graduate include the advancement of tutoring as well as expanding the agriculture program and bringing different courses back into the curriculum. “We’ve been able to bring back more of your traditional construction and manufacturing courses for kids. Which keeps kids interested in an area that they really like. Which helps them do well in some of their other classes,” said Manering.
They’ve also encouraged students to participate in band, choir, sports, and other extracurricular activities. “If they stay involved, they have to have good grades and they want to be around here.”
One of the things that Manering is proud about the graduation rate is the fact that the State of Indiana requires 40 credits to graduate with a Core 40 or General Diploma. “We require 45. That’s not an easy thing for kids to do.”
That 45-credit requirement can sometimes cause difficulty for students to graduate when they transfer to John Glenn from another school that only requires 40. “They transfer in, and they were on track through their sophomore year, but they were on a 40 credit,” Principal Manering said. “So, we’ve had to push up with some of those kids.”
While the high school sees the seniors walking across the stage, Manering explained that this achievement wasn’t just a high school achievement. “Honestly, it’s a credit from every teacher to every counselor to every instructional aide, custodian, cook, bus driver. They are all a part of that. That bus driver being friendly in the first thing, saying good morning to you. I mean, that kid could be walking out of the house and the worst thing happens to them that day and they are not ready for school, and you just say good morning, how you doing and that just switches it. It’s all those little things that come together that make the school great.”
Superintendent Christopher Winchell agreed with Manering. “I often refer to the team as the John Glenn Family. When I send a note out to parents, I’ll say ‘hello John Glenn Family.’ Because he’s right, it’s really not John Glenn High School. It’s really not even Walkerton or North Liberty anymore. It’s really anybody who chooses to be a part of the John Glenn Family because we’ve really evolved from a community school to kind of like a regional school because of all the open enrollment. It really is a tribute to everybody because I couldn’t support him (Manering) the way he needs to be supported to get the 100 percent if I wasn’t supported by the school board. And the board couldn’t support me if they weren’t supported by the community. And we really couldn’t afford to do what we do if we didn’t have people from outside of our boundaries choosing us as their educational institution.”
Setting up and operating all of these programs and initiatives may seem like a lot of work, Principal Manering said that it’s worth it. “At the end of the day, they’re our kids. We want them to graduate. We want them to move on.”
He recalled going to last weekend’s TCU Bi-County Basketball Tournament. During that time, a graduate from John Glenn that went through some of those programs sat next to Manering and told him about his job at a tractor company and about how great he’s doing.
“It felt pretty good,” Manering said.
“For me, it was like the culmination of 15 years of school improvement work and the culmination of 15 years of dedication to the kids of John Glenn High School for me,” said Superintendent WInchell when he found that the 100 percent graduation rate was confirmed by the State of Indiana. “It was in some ways a crowning achievement of all the academic work that’s been done here at John Glenn.”
When he found out, Manering said, “In just one word: proud. Proud is the word. When you first see it, you start thinking like ‘this can’t be possible.’ And when you sit back and start reflecting on it and you start telling the school board at the meeting and you’re telling your staff and you’re just a part of it and you’re just trying to guide it all. But you’re just proud. You’re just proud of those kids. You’re proud of those teachers, you’re proud of every stakeholder that’s around because it’s not something that is easy.”
