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Latest figures show high graduation rate for PHSBy Joel Stottrup If you use a report from the state as an indicator of the percentage of students in a high school class who make it to graduation, Princeton High School is doing well. Principal Mark Sleeper reported to the Princeton School Board on June 22 that the latest figures were from PHS Class of 2001. The percentage of students in that class when they were freshmen in the 1997-98 school year who ended up graduating four years later was 96.4 percent, Sleeper told the board. The rates for Minnesota public schools are kept by a state accounting system called MARS (Minnesota Automated Reporting Student System). Sleeper, talking last week after the board meeting, said it is a "complicated calculation." He explained that the number of students who either transfer in or out of the district is excluded from the totals. Sleeper was able to dig up the graduation percentage for Princeton for four years prior to 2001 and they were 93.6 percent in 2000, 94.7 percent in '99, 90.8 percent in '98 and 95 percent in '97. The percentage has risen since 1998 and Sleeper, who has been principal at Princeton High School for three years, said Monday that the rise is the gist of what the reports are saying. Having Princeton in the multischool Oak Land Vocational School program has been a factor in high graduation rates, Sleeper said. (The other school districts participating in Oak Land are St. Francis and Cambridge-Isanti.) Expanding the PASS program at Princeton two years ago is also a big factor, said Sleeper. PASS stands for Princeton Alternative Secondary School and is for students who are at risk of not graduating from high school. The PASS curriculum and coursework and the counseling component make PASS different from traditional classes at Princeton, said Sleeper. The counseling part, for example, finds counselors being an advocate for the PASS students to help them deal with problems beyond the classroom that could be interfering with their schooling, Sleeper explained. "All adolescents have their issues," Sleeper said, but for the at-risk students who don't have an advocate, it becomes too easy to quit school. Sleeper provided additional statistics. For example, he said that in the 2001 graduating class, there were actually seven students who didn't graduate that year out of the number who were in the class in their freshmen year. Four of those seven continued school, in most cases at an alternative school, and finally graduated, while the remaining three dropped out, he said PHS rate compares well with others Sleeper also compared the 96.4 percent rate for the 2001 class here with similarly-sized high schools. His report showed Marshall having a graduation rate of 89.7 percent, Hutchinson 83.8 percent, Little Falls 87.5 percent and Worthington 81.4 percent. In area school districts, Milaca had 88 percent in 2001, Elk River 80.2 percent and Foley 92.1 percent. Princeton Union-Eagle |