Success Academy 2010-2011 by the numbers
162 students finished 849 classes
43 students moved up a grade level
Strike (or warning) reduction: 2009-2010 strike total = 105; 2010-2011 strike total = 74, which is a 30 percent drop.
Source: Middletown City Schools
MIDDLETOWN — McKenzie Grate said before arriving at Middletown City Schools, she was the kid who sat alone at recess that people poked and prodded, and called weird.
That is until she enrolled in Middletown High School’s Success Academy, an alternative education program designed to accommodate students in grades 9-12 who do not thrive in a traditional classroom.
“I honestly am grateful for these people. These are my parents, these are my aunts and uncles, this is my family, and these are my sisters. If it weren’t for them, I would not have graduated,” Grate said.
“I am now currently attending Brown Mackie (College). I will have been going for a year this October, I’m pursuing my career as a vet tech, I’m doing everything I ever wanted and I even have a child. I had him my senior year and if it weren’t for these people, I would have dropped out because I didn’t have people to tell me everything was going to be OK. It’s the psyche these people give you that help you graduate. They’re touching your mind.”
Grate was just one of three students — from the academy’s 240 graduates — who gave testimonials about how the Success Academy has helped them graduate and move on into adulthood to become productive citizens.
More than 20 students, educators from the Greater Cincinnati region and local officials attended a meeting Friday to hear about the Success Academy, and to hear an presentation by Joe Hendershott, director of field experiences and internships at Ashland University and author of “Reaching the Wounded Student.”
The academy was asked to host the meeting, based on the success of its program, by the Ohio Department of Education, said Carmela Cotter, principal of Middletown High School who developed and implemented the academy.
She said the mission of the program “is committed to providing a positive alternative education environment that prepares students to meet the challenges of an ever changing world.”
“The Middletown High School Success Academy is a bit of a school within a school under the umbrella of Middletown High School. Our students in the Success Academy can participate in any activities other district students can participate in, provided that they’re showing progress and provided that they’re attending school regularly,” Cotter said.
“That’s a huge selling point. That and the fact when they complete the program, their diploma is a regular Middletown High School diploma is tremendously important to the parents in our community. Those two things we immediately identified as parts that we wanted to have in the Success Academy model.”
And why did the district need a Success Academy?
“We have a demonstrated need in our community with a growing poverty base five years ago. What we were seeing was that our student population was facing more challenging issues and they needed different levels of support, and different types of support,” Cotter said.
“Our kids are smart, there’s know question about that, but they were overburden with different types of society and social factors that often were showing out, and were keeping them from success in a traditional classroom.”
Some of the factors that the academy has seen in the students its serves in the past five years are kids who were acting as the family breadwinners, who are caring for children or ill parents, who are homeless students or who are on their own, suffering from illnesses themselves, who are phobic and made poor choices, who are transient, credit deficient and displaying symptoms resulting in poor attendance and engagement in their studies, she said.
Cotter said to help address these students needs — you have to have the right teachers.
“Everybody knows the most important piece are the teachers. If you don’t have the right teachers, you’re not going to get where you need to get with your kids,” she said, in reference of helping the program reach its No. 1 goal to increase the graduate rate.
Cotter said as a result of the academy’s 10 teachers efforts, who serve 120 students at any given time, the program graduation rate increased 4.68 percent from the first year it started until this last year where it rose to 16.8 percent.
“It steadily moves up in every category ... I think that that’s a true mark of success. I’m very proud that I had the opportunity to help build this program, but I’m more proud that I was involved with such a high-functioning group of adults because they really have served our children so well,” she said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 483-5219 or dewilson@coxohio.com.
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