From Kentucky:
WILLIAMSBURG — When 299 graduates earned diplomas from Whitley County High School this June, it would have been hard to know which students might not have been there without the district’s 20-year investment in pre-k.
Statistics, however, make it clear that the graduating class would likely have been much smaller. In 1990, just before the pre-k program began, the Whitley County graduating class numbered 173. The district’s annual dropout rate stood at over 6.8 percent. Over four years, that translates to 27 percent of the freshman class that wouldn’t make it to graduation.
The high failure rate was a leading factor in a state takeover of the Whitley County schools in 1989. As the district emerged from state oversight in 1991, new superintendent Lonnie Anderson began what has become a continuing effort to aggressively grow the preschool program launched by the state as part of the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act.
And the aggressive pre-k program has resulted in this:
The district now counts 380 students in its pre-k and HeadStart programs and about 100 more in its daycare and associated early care options. Anderson said it is no coincidence that growth in pre-k preceded an impressive lowering of the district’s yearly dropout rate, which has shrunk from the 6.84 percent of 1989 to 0.84 percent last year. At the same time, achievement is on the rise.
“Our original goal was to perform in the top 50 percent of Kentucky school districts, then the top 25 percent,” Anderson said. “We’ve been able to accomplish that and more.” Indeed, Whitley County High School earned a Bronze Award in both 2009 and 2010 from the U.S. News ranking of the nation’s best high schools.
Find out how they did it by reading the full report from the Prichard Committee here (PDF).
