By Mark Tallman
My third day of visiting high success districts in north central Kansas began in Beloit, where I was joined by KASB Leadership Field Specialists Gary Sechrist and Marcia Weseman to visit a district with a postsecondary effective rate of 63 percent, 8.1% higher than predicted, and a graduation rate of 97.7 percent, 5.6% higher than predicted based on its size and percent of high needs students.
With about 757 students, Beloit USD 273 is the second largest of the six districts I visited in the area. We began the day meeting with Superintendent Jeff Travis. As with several other high-success districts we visited, he credited the higher student outcomes to changes that began in response to a problem.
“There had been several very bad incidents with student behavior,” said Travis. “We didn’t want those things to be what people associated with Beloit. We were brought in to change that. We wanted people to see good things if they searched for Beloit. To do that, we had to change the culture.”
If there is an overriding theme to those changes, it is student focus: student involvement, student voice and student needs.
We began with a short tour of the high school, watching students work on robotics. We got coffee in the student-run coffee shop in the library, serviced by students in classes like finance in the workplace and entrepreneurship, designed and built by students in other career and tech education courses.
We met with junior/senior high school principal Casey Seyfert in the classroom for the JAG-K (Jobs for America’s Graduates – Kansas) program. Beloit is one of 48 districts with JAG-K programs designed to help students with identified barriers to success, including academic, environmental, physical, psychological, and work-related categories. Adopted five years ago to get more students involved, the program serves 40 students with support to graduate and prepare for postsecondary education and employment and has won national recognition over the past two years.
In fact, every high school student is required to be involved in some activity and Seyfert says 90% are involved in at least two. The school district also requires each student to complete 40 hours of community service work, or 10 hours per school year, to graduate, which has been in place for 23 years.
“Involved kids tend to graduate,” said Seyfert. “Involved kids tend to care about their school, and they tend to care more about their own education. If a kid can’t find something to be a part of, we’ll start sometime new; if not, they’re on the student advisory council.”
Travis and Seyfert say student input has helped promote everything from more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) opportunities to improved school bathrooms to an annual student appreciation week. “Kids know they are valued,” said Seyfert. “I say our kids have to love school. That’s how we take care of chronic absenteeism. If you want to go to school, you're going to be successful. The kids that I've seen drop out, I feel they didn't love school. They didn't want to be here. If you're involved in activity, you have accountability and you'll be here if you're if you have a voice.”
The high school has added 35 credit courses over the past four years to expand student choices. It created new partnerships with the North Central Kansas Technical School to allow more students to take postsecondary tech courses in high school at no cost, with state funding. Students have earned over 100 dual enrollment hours of college credit, with about 50% of seniors taking college courses. The district has raised grant funding for equipment to increase high CTE, STEM courses. Over the past two years, the number of CTE pathways has increased from nine to 12. Since 2018, the number of employment internships for high school students has increased from six to 24.
Like many districts I’ve visited, Beloit credits part of their success to how they use structured time, so students have a period each day with a teacher they stay with for years called “PRIDE Time” to support social, emotional and character development, as well as academic advising and support. PRIDE stands for Positive, Responsible, Integrity, Determination and Excellence, and the same themes are promoted at Beloit Elementary School to make “Trojan Pride” a district-wide theme.
While we spent most of the time at the high school, we also visited with elementary school principal Janet Porter, and discussed strategies that have helped improve results, such as a long-term commitment to early childhood programs, an early childhood center for children birth to three or four-year-old, when they can enter the district’s state-funded preschool programs. Beloit is part of the Mitchell County Partnership for Children. The elementary school has been revising its reading program and working to strengthen its programs to intervene if children are struggling or need enrichment quickly.
Porter also noted the Teacher Cadet program, which allows high school students interested in teaching to get experience working with elementary teachers and students as part of the district’s efforts to develop its own workforce.
Finally, both the elementary and junior/senior high schools are part of the Schools of Character program, and both have been nationally recognized by the organization Character.org.
Bright Idea: In a step that may sound unthinkable, Beloit Junior/Senior High removed cell phones during the school day this year. “Last year, we did away with cell phones at lunch, so they had to talk to each other,” said Seyfert. “This year, we did away with them completely. We're only a month and a half in, but the improvements socially have been astronomical.” He noted parents can still communicate with students through their Chromebooks in emergencies.
District Profile: Beloit’s 757 students put it midway in the 500 to 1,600 enrollment group and its 61.3% low-income plus students with disabilities is about six% less than the state average. Its postsecondary effective rate of 63% is 8.1% higher than the predicted rate of 54.6% based on enrollment and high-needs students, and its graduation rate of 97.7% is 5.6% higher than the predicted rate of 92.1 percent. (Beloit’s 2022 state test results are about at the predicted level; its change in test results 7.1% below the predicted level and its change in the graduation rate from 2017 to 2022 is about two percent lower than predicted.)
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