Lawrence High School, left, and Free State High School are pictured on Friday, Nov. 6, 2015.

Nearly 20 years ago, Free State High School was built on the outskirts of northwest Lawrence, parceling out students living north of 15th Street from centrally located Lawrence High. And since the city split its students between the two schools, one has academically outperformed the other.

In every academic factor — ACT scores and participation, advanced placement enrollment, state assessments, National Merit Scholars, graduation rates and graduates going on to four-year colleges — Free State wins out year after year over Lawrence High.

Where Lawrence High does consistently exceed Free State — students living in poverty, students who underperform academically and students who drop out — is equally telling.

The disparities between the two high schools aren’t a matter of unequal access, said Lawrence schools Superintendent Rick Doll. Each school has the same academic offerings, but the differences in student demographics means equal access doesn’t necessarily ensure equal outcomes, he explained.

“We know, unfortunately, that poverty does predict achievement, and we’re getting better at making that not predictable, but it is there,” Doll told the Journal-World.

Demographic differences

This school year, 35 percent of students at Lawrence High — about 550 students — are enrolled in the free lunch program, compared with 24 percent — about 400 students — at Free State. When students are living in poverty, they have more strains on them than do their peers, said Vanessa Sanburn, president of the Lawrence school board.

“Typically, your free lunch students are ones that are living in generational poverty, that likely are really going to be struggling to get out of that,” she said.

To qualify for free lunches, household income must be within 130 percent of federal poverty guidelines. For instance, for a household of four, annual income must be less than $31,525 per year. Sanburn said that although city and county support organizations are beneficial, cuts in state programs have decreased some social safety net programs, such as food stamps, for these students.

“It’s really hard in that environment to say that we’re going to tackle this and make sure that all students can achieve at the same level,” she said.

There are also three foster care or group homes — O’Connell Youth Ranch, The Villages and The Shelter Inc. — that fall within the boundary of Lawrence High, whereas Free State has only one such home. Many students living in these group homes were removed from abusive homes or have gone through other trauma. Though it’s worth trying, the support the school district can provide those students can’t solve everything, Sanburn said.

“I have a master’s in social work, and I believe that there’s a lot that can be done to help,” Sanburn said. “But saying that a school district program is going fill in the gaps for all of this that’s tragic and difficult — I don’t know.”

In addition to having fewer tangible resources, economically disadvantaged students lack some experiential resources as well. If a student’s parents aren’t college educated, it may affect how well those parents can help their students prepare and plan for college, Doll explained.

“Lawrence High, because of the higher poverty rate and other issues, may not have as many parents that have that expertise, so it is important for us to then try to pick up that slack,” Doll said. “If you don’t have parents that went to college, you may not know how to navigate how to get there.”

Achievement gap

Doll said that though students at both schools have access to the same curriculum and enrichment programs, participation in those programs is higher at Free State.

“They’ve got exactly the same program,” Doll said. “The challenge is not to change that, because that’s equitable. The challenge is how to get more kids to take advantage of the educational opportunities that are there.”

As participation in advanced placement classes increases, so do other markers of high achievement. At Free State, the percentage of students who take the ACT, do well in the National Merit Scholar program and go on to attend a four-year college is higher than at Lawrence High.

This school year, 46 percent of Free State students are enrolled in AP classes, compared with 36 percent at Lawrence High. The gap between the percentage of seniors taking the ACT was even wider, at 76 percent versus 59 percent. Doll said enrollment in AP classes directly affects how well a student is prepared for college.

“The more advanced courses that a kid takes, the better his ACT score’s going to be,” Doll said. “It’s almost like this circular logic — you got to get them in the courses.”

Differences in academic performance between the schools extend to middle- and low-achieving students as well. Though graduation and dropout rates have improved for both schools over the past several years, Lawrence High’s rates — as well as the percentage of students who don’t meet standards on state assessments — still indicate more low-achieving students. For instance, the graduation rate at Lawrence High is about 90 percent, compared with about 94 percent at Free State.

“Each one of those kids that doesn’t graduate is a failure of our system,” Sanburn said.

But the achievement gaps between the two schools aren’t a reflection of the quality of teachers. According to the most recent data from the Kansas State Department of Education, teacher quality — as measured by the percentages of fully licensed teachers and core content classes taught by highly qualified teachers — is better at Lawrence High.

For the 2013-2014 school year, about 99 percent of teachers at Lawrence High were fully licensed and 90 percent of core content classes were taught by highly qualified teachers. At Free State, those figures were 95 and 84 percent.

Support programs

Though both schools have the same support programs to help middle- and low-achieving students, some of those programs are more extensive at Lawrence High, Doll said. For instance, Lawrence High has more students — 108 versus 90 — enrolled in Advancement Via Individual Determination, a program now in its third year that offers tutoring and academic support to help more students take AP classes and prepare for college.

“What’s key is, you don’t take a (student who) has not been as academic as he should and say, ‘Just take this AP course.’ He’ll fail,” Doll said.

Counselors at both schools also help students come up with four-year plans, so students can match their career and future education goals with the appropriate curriculum, Doll said.

“Kids might say they want to be a doctor, but if you don’t take the right curriculum, it’s more difficult to do that,” he said.

A couple of supports are new this school year. Because of socioeconomic differences, the student-to-staff ratio — 21.25 versus 21.5 — is slightly lower at Lawrence High. As a result, the school now has two social workers when Free State has one.

Overall at-risk staff, who make up student support teams of counselors and social workers, depend on the percentage of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches. For this school year, the at-risk staffing applied at the high schools was 12 FTE total, with Lawrence High receiving 6.6 FTE to Free State’s 5.4.

Lawrence High assistant principal Mark Preut, who oversees the support team staff, said the additional social worker helps to better support at-risk students, dealing with issues ranging from truancy to emotional support.

“It provides an additional resource on working through the social-emotional needs of students,” he said, noting that if a student is struggling emotionally or at home, it’s hard for that student to focus on schoolwork.

Natalie Konkel, a school counselor at Lawrence High, said the counselors have academic meetings with every student during the first semester, focusing mainly on the four-year plan, post-secondary education and career planning.

“I think the most important thing accomplished in these meetings, though, is that we get the chance to build rapport with our students so that they know a familiar face on the mental health team here at LHS,” she said.

The support teams at both high schools also review the circumstances of students who drop out or don’t finish with enough credits to graduate, and determine contributing factors and what the school can do to mitigate.

“We know the story behind it, and what happened,” Preut said, noting that in some cases, such as foster children who ran away from their placements or were transferred mid-year, it can also be due to a lack of school record transfers from the receiving school.

Limits to doing more

Despite the support programs in place, Doll recognized that more can be done, but budget restrictions mean it’s not as simple as just adding staff to support programs.

“It’s never enough,” Doll said. “No, it’s not enough; it continues to be a challenge.”

Expanding the AP and college support program AVID — which currently serves students in eighth through 12th grades — to include more students overall, as well as adding sixth and seventh grade, could be considered, Doll said, though it is difficult to add staff at a time when budgets are being cut, he added.

“That might be a future programming idea if we had the money,” he said. “Start them sooner, get them thinking about college.”

Another possibility is to increase the number of counselors so students get more individual attention from support teams and when working on their four-year plans, Doll said. Currently, the approximately 1,600 students at each high school are divided among four counselors.

“They are in place, but they need to play a bigger role,” Doll said. “If we had more counselors, we could give more personal attention to students, particularly those students who may not have as much support at home.”

Attitude also is important, Sanburn said.

“It’s just a matter of really believing that all of our students are capable of graduating and achieving,” she said.