Photo provided A photo of iGrad students and staff members as they pose for a photo in a classroom.
Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. starting next year will take over full operation of a program meant to keep struggling students on track to graduate.
iGrad, launched in 2012, until now was a partnership with Ivy Tech Community College — Columbus that provides academic support and mentoring to BCSC and Flat-Rock Hawcreek School Corporation (FRHC) students from grades 8-12 who are identified as at-risk. Students in iGrad get individualized boosts to help them graduate and prepare for college, if that’s their chosen path.
BCSC officials said they hope that iGrad, in more seamless conjunction with their team cohort model, will ultimately result in an uptick in graduation rates.
“There is a structured process that our teams are using and to bring other coaches with experience working with students into that system will give us more reach,” BCSC Director of Secondary Education Charles Edwards told The Republic.
“What I understand is Ivy Tech is in a position where they were moving away from the iGrad program,” according to Edwards. “And for us, it made sense to pick up the ball and run with it.”
Stephanie Amos, Interim Chancellor for Ivy Tech Columbus, said it had been “an honor for Ivy Tech to have collaborated on a program that’s helped so many students stay on track and reach graduation” and that the school has “seen firsthand the difference iGrad can make.”
“As we pass the torch to our school corporation partners, we do so with full confidence – not only in their dedication, but in how well this program aligns with their mission to support student success at every level,” Amos said in a statment.
There are about 14 iGrad coaches that provide support, whether academic or emotional, in BCSC and FRHC schools. They are technically Ivy Tech employees but starting next year they will be BCSC employees.
“The idea is that if those folks want to come work for BCSC, we have extended the offer for them to come and work for BCSC,” Edwards said.
iGrad is a kind of predecessor to the team cohort model that got started during the 2023-24 school year, which BCSC Superintendent Chad Phillips has described as a similar model to iGrad but scaled-up.
Team cohorts are a case management-type system in which a team of teachers and administrators connect students with needed services and resources. As classes moves up a grade, a particular student will stay with the same team of teachers and administrators who monitor their progress and work with students on any interventions if needed.
School corporation officials credited the cohort model after graduation data for the 2023-24 school year was released, showing 90.01% of BCSC students graduated, up nearly 7 percentage points from the previous year. It marked the district’s highest graduation rate since at least 2014-15, the last year of data available on the Indiana Department of Education website.
With respect to iGrad, 100% of seniors who started in the program graduated on time during 2023-24, including 116 from BCSC and 11 from FRHC. That was the first time that had happened in the program’s decade-plus existence. Phillips identified the success as partly due to the combination of iGrad and the cohort model calling it a “multiplier effect.”
iGrad averaged a 96 percent on-time completion rate in its first 11 years and impacted 2,434 students since 2017, according to BCSC.
“I think structurally, we made a commitment to the teams two years ago, and I think had we been in a position to say, ‘Hey, let’s start iGrad now fresh,’ we would certainly nest that under the teams,” Edwards said. “So structurally for us, we are looking at making the iGrad coaches part of the cohort teams.”
Officials in BCSC don’t foresee iGrad operating much differently, other than that students will encounter the program through the team cohort model.
“It will be a cohort process. There will be an iGrad coach assigned to 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade. And so depending on what grade level you’re at, you will come in through the team,” Edwards said. “… “For us, it’s just to help as many students as possible.”
Currently students in iGrad are either identified to be a part of the program, or go through an application process.
What that will look like going forward will be worked out over the next few months, Edwards said. He added as well that it’s expected that iGrad will still be available to FRHC students— one iGrad coach works out of Hauser High School.
iGrad had received funding by BCSC, in part through a partnership with the Columbus Redevelopment Commission, Flat-Rock Hawcreek and Ivy Tech.
Redevelopment provided BCSC $330,500 for iGrad in 2024, part of an annual contribution, along with $267,397 for transitional programs for students with disabilities and $402,103 for STEM initiatives.
The commission had given BCSC $750,000 in tax-increment-financing (TIF) dollars each school year from 2016-17 up until 2021-22, when school officials requested and were granted a $250,000 increase to help convert elementary school STEM labs into full specials rotations and add two more iGrad coaches.
Phillips said last September that the number of students in the iGrad program was slightly down from 623 in 2022-23 to 589 in 2023-24 in part because “the Ivy Tech Foundation has had to increase pay to keep up with the demand to keep good coaches” and that “it’s been tougher to keep up with the number of coaches needed to serve all those students.”
It’s not uncommon for school district to implement programs aimed at helping at-risk students, but Edwards said the individualized approach and lengths BCSC goes makes them different.
“When you look at the depths that our folks go to to help students be successful: they are talking about each and every student, and what that student needs may be and how they, as a team, can structure the help and support to get them what they need,” Edwards said. “(It’s) not uncommon to have programs, but is uncommon to go to the depths that we do.”
