Monday night’s regularly scheduled meeting of the Dade County Board of Education quickly focused on Dade County High School’s recent designation as an institution eligible for Georgia Promise Scholarships for students.
“I didn’t even know what it was until someone started texting me about it,” said Dade County High School Principal Brent Cooper at the onset of his report to the board Monday.
Last week, the Georgia Office for Student Achievement released its list of schools, identified by student achievement scores in the bottom 25% of schools across the state of Georgia.
DCHS was Dade’s lone campus listed, making students zoned for the school potentially eligible for Georgia Promise Scholarships, set to be disbursed for the first time later this fall.
Statewide, some 400,000 students could be eligible, as families can receive up to $6,500 to help offset the costs of private school tuition, student home-schooling or other education-related expenses.
The first application window opens this Saturday, March 1 to April 15th.
Schools were determined for possible scholarship inclusion by the Georgia Department of Education’s
2024 College and Career Ready Performance Index, often referred to by its acronym CCRPI.
“Delving deeper into the CCRPI data, it’s progress and closing gaps that really contributed to the fact that we’re on the bottom 25 percent, unfortunately that’s where we are right now,” lamented Cooper on the CCRPI’s scoring metrics.
As to how to improve the less than stellar numbers, Cooper says a greater focus on students categorized as either economically disadvantaged or disabled is where he believes DCHS can regain lost ground on the GOSA score.
Dade County High School’s overall GOSA achievement score is 64.1.
A little more than 61% of Dade County High School’s 617 students are considered economically disadvantaged.
Chronic absenteeism was cited by Principal Cooper with nearly a third of enrolled DCHS students who have already missed 10% or more of classroom instruction time for this school year.
For the state’s breakdown on Dade County High School and others deemed eligible for Georgia Promise Scholarship inclusion, the CCRPI report summaries can be found here.
By Vince Lennon