I do think it is important to understand if students are leaving because of dissatisfaction. It is difficult to improve if a system does not know where the dissatisfaction comes from and whether it is something that can be addressed and improved. Maybe some things cannot be fixed. If someone is looking for more athletics, that may be hard to fix with a small school. If someone leaves because they are not being challenged sufficiently, that is something that can be examined.
________________________________ From: Sara Mattes <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2023 1:29 PM To: Barbara Low <[email protected]> Cc: Peter Speert <[email protected]>; Lincoln Talk <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LincolnTalk] Lincoln School attrition data going back to 2016 Simply documenting where they went would be a good and non-intrusive start. Maybe that is already done. Some might be reluctant to answer a survey, or participate in an interview, but simply documenting where the child went would give some clues. ------ Sara Mattes On Mar 22, 2023, at 1:25 PM, Barbara Low <[email protected]> wrote: I found hope that the new super and principal would take action to do exit interviews or a survey or somehow gather information that will hopefully be useful going forward. Sent from my T-Mobile 5G Device Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg> ________________________________ From: Peter Speert <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2023 1:04:21 PM To: Barbara Low <[email protected]> Cc: Bob Kupperstein <[email protected]>; Karla Gravis <[email protected]>; Lincoln Talk <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LincolnTalk] Lincoln School attrition data going back to 2016 Excellent point, Barb. Would it be feasible to send questionnaires to families that have recently left the school system to ask what motivated them? Peter Speert Sent from my iPad On Mar 22, 2023, at 10:28 AM, Barbara Low <[email protected]> wrote: Without exit interviews, we don't know why that is taking place. And if a child is removed from the Lincoln School for whatever reason, it is very easy for the rest of the children in the family to follow even if they lack the precipitating issue. Different vacation schedules can be a very strong reason for the family's convenience. How do we not lose the first child? No one should object to gathering more information so school actions are not taken or avoided due to ignorance. ________________________________ From: Lincoln <[email protected]> on behalf of Bob Kupperstein <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2023 10:23 AM To: Karla Gravis <[email protected]> Cc: Lincoln Talk <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LincolnTalk] Lincoln School attrition data going back to 2016 I've been in Lincoln for over 30 years now and parents have been moving kids out of Lincoln schools ever since I can remember. They do it for a variety of reasons and academic excellence is often not the main reason. At different times I remember parents being concerned about discipline in the schools, lack of structure, lack of desired extracurricular activities, etc. Very often, many parents want their kids to go to schools similar to the ones they went to, whether that means private schools, parochial schools, more structured, ..., whatever. I'd caution against taking this data as a sign that Lincoln schools aren't performing well enough. -Bob On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 9:13 AM Karla Gravis <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hello, Since the topic of trends has come up, I pulled together attrition data for previous years, straight from the DOE website: School 2016-2017 2017-2018 2018-2019 2019-2020 2020-2021 2021-2022 2022-2023 Lincoln 6.2 6.8 7.1 6.8 7.8 5.0 8.5 Carlisle 2.7 3.7 4.0 2.9 4.3 2.3 3.5 Dover/Sherborn 2.7 3.0 3.1 3.1 4.8 4.1 3.0 Lexington 3.7 3.0 4.0 2.5 6.2 5.9 4.2 Going back as far as 2016, Lincoln School consistently has the highest attrition in this group (with only one single exception in 2021 where Lexington was higher, but we were still higher than Carlisle and Dover/Sherborn). Getting this data is a very manual process, which is why I focused on our similar districts plus Lexington that was used as a comparison, but I am happy to add other towns if people are interested. It's not a difference of 1 - 2 students. Carlisle has a similar size to ours (383 in grades 2-7 versus our 356). If we had had their attrition coming into 2022-2023, we would have lost 18 fewer children. I am not making an assumption as to why our attrition is higher, but I do think it is worth investigating. -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. Change your subscription settings at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln. -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to [email protected]. Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. Change your subscription settings at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln. -- The LincolnTalk mailing list. To post, send mail to [email protected]. Browse the archives at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/private/lincoln/. Change your subscription settings at https://pairlist9.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/lincoln.
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