Question

Sky High School has significant student dropout and failure rates among its senior-year classes. To address this issue, it has obtained grant funding for the senior class. Because this problem appears to be dispersed across the entire senior class, some elements of the program serve all the seniors, even those who appear successful and on track toward graduation throughout the year. The objective of the program is for the students to complete the senior year and graduate. Success of this retention program is determined to be graduation. The data in the table below are available:

Sky High School Senior Class Retention Program Performance Measures

School Year	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
# of seniors who complete their senior year	1250	1225	1267	1223	1260
# of high school students graduating	1200	1159	1240	1125	1206
# of seniors enrolled first day of school	1377	1294	1322	1258	1294
Expenditures for retention program	$3,565,053	$3,350,166	$3,422,658	$4,257,852	$4,257,852

Please provide measures of process and financial measures of efficiency and effectiveness. Is the Sky High School guidance office making progress towards its mission? Why or why not?

Answer 1

Please see the table below. Based on the information give, certain measures of efficiency and effectiveness had been worked out. In the last part of the table, measures of financial effectiveness had also been worked out.

Please pay special attention to the linkage column that explains how each of the measures had been calculated.

Sky High School Senior Class Retention Program Performance Measures
School Year	Linkage	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
# of seniors who complete their senior year	A	1250	1225	1267	1223	1260
# of high school students graduating	B	1200	1159	1240	1125	1206
# of seniors enrolled first day of school	C	1377	1294	1322	1258	1294
Expenditures for retention program	D	$3,565,053	$3,350,166	$3,422,658	$4,257,852	$4,257,852
Measures of Efficiency
Growth in Enrollment	y-o-y growth rate in C		-6.03%	2.16%	-4.84%	2.86%
% completing senior years	A / C	90.78%	94.67%	95.84%	97.22%	97.37%
% completing graduation	B / C	87.15%	89.57%	93.80%	89.43%	93.20%
School drop out ratio	1 - A / C	9.22%	5.33%	4.16%	2.78%	2.63%
Graduation drop out ratio	1 - B / C	12.85%	10.43%	6.20%	10.57%	6.80%
Financial Measures
Growth in expenditure for retention program	y-o-y growth in D		-6.03%	2.16%	24.40%	0.00%
Expenditure for retention per enrollment	D / C	$2,589	$2,589	$2,589	$3,385	$3,290
Expenditure for retention per student completing senior years	D / A	$2,852	$2,735	$2,701	$3,481	$3,379
Expenditure for retention per student completing graduation	D / B	$2,971	$2,891	$2,760	$3,785	$3,531

Is the Sky High School guidance office making progress towards its mission? Why or why not?

The Sky High School is indeed making progress towards its mission:

1. Over a period of time, school drop out ratio has declined significantly (from 9.22% in the year 2010 to 2.63% in the year 2014)
2. Graduation drop out ratio has also declined considerably ( from 12.85% to 6.80%)
3. Enrollments have grown though they have also declined in some year. Overall there had been growth over 2010 to 2014 period.