Common Goal: Grad coaches are a proven way to fight the dropout epidemic

A high school diploma today, although a substantial accomplishment, is not enough to prepare students for a productive life. Offering upper-level classes to the college-bound and allowing other students to drop out as a way of sorting students is no longer acceptable. The skills needed in technical fields and trades are not that different from skills required to succeed in college.

As part of our Journey Toward Excellence for each student in Decatur Township, Ill., we set out to create rich, relevant experiences to prepare our young people for postsecondary training and success in a highly technological society. That goal drew me to the Common Goal initiative of the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. Common Goal's objectives mirror ours in the Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township, including more students graduating and pursuing postsecondary education or military service.

We use several strategies to move our students in this direction. Through Common Goal, we have implemented a successful mentoring program and exposed more students to college life through regular college visits.

Common Goal's summer internship program paired students with employers in their field of interest. During the 80-hour internship, Decatur Central High School juniors received invaluable work experience in an authentic workplace environment while they learned the responsibilities and obligations involved in being good employees.

Thanks to Common Goal, we are excited to become the 14th public high school in Marion County to add a graduation coach, a proven method of improving graduation rates.

We are about to embark on the next step: creating the Connection Center, through which we will create focused partnerships with social service agencies to help students remove obstacles that impede school success. Common Goal supports the planning and implementation of this model program.

The concerted effort to keep this postsecondary education-oriented philosophy in the forefront has resulted in changing the student culture by removing these real or imagined barriers to college and career choices. These programs are not pieces that exist in isolation but are parts of an intentional movement leading our students to learning in the future.

There is no question that Common Goal has been a catalyst to improve the success rate of public high schools in Marion County. The support of the Indianapolis Chamber has been critical in our ability in Decatur Township to reach our goals, resulting in our largest graduating class in history this past year, more student scholarships than ever before and more than 130 students graduating this year with a substantial amount of college credit.

We look forward to the day in the near future when we can say that we have provided an avenue for every student to have established a career path and a foothold on his future when he passes through the doors of Decatur Central High School for the last time. With the Indianapolis Chamber's Common Goal initiative, we are confident that day will be here for students who are entering Decatur Central today.

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