Johns Hopkins University has ruled that three high schools in the Armstrong School District do not deserve to be on a list of 1,700 high schools nationwide that are labeled as “dropout factories.”

Chris Boccanfuso, a research assistant at Johns Hopkins, reviewed Armstrong School District’s appeal and ruled Friday that a correction was warranted. He notified Armstrong School District and several other districts in an email.

“After reviewing the cases of your schools, I have found that your schools’ various situations warranted the removal of your school from our nationwide list of ‘Dropout Factories,’” Boccanfuso wrote. “We have already contacted the Associated Press and provided them a list of schools that will be taken off the ‘Dropout Factory’ list, along with the specific rationale behind these data-based decisions on a school-by-school basis. In each of your cases, new schools opening within your district, or a presence of a vocational school within your district created a situation where your school’s Promoting Power Ratio was misleading.

“We will also be posting an updated retraction on our website later today (www.csos.jhu.edu) with the same information provided to the AP.

“In closing, I would like to thank all of you for your diligence and in many cases the provision of detailed data to support your school’s case. I’m certain that our country would not be facing the dropout crisis it is today if more schools had administrators as dedicated and detail-oriented as you.”

The initial report came out last week and was widely publicized. Their report identified 1,700 high schools nationwide as being “dropout factories” if a senior class was made up of 60 percent or fewer of the students who entered as freshmen.

Armstrong School District administrators immediately took issue with the report because Elderton, Kittanning and West Shamokin high schools were included, despite the fact that the district-wide graduation rate is about 90 percent any given year. Substitute Superintendent Chris DeVivo and other administrators suspected that the Johns Hopkins University report did not account for the roughly 30 percent of Armstrong School District 11th and 12th-grade students who transfer out of district high schools to attend and graduate from Lenape Technical School.

District officials appealed to Johns Hopkins University officials to reverse the findings for Armstrong School District.

“The ‘dropout factory’ label was always unwarranted in our case,” DeVivo said. “This report was misleading to the Armstrong School District community, and we’re glad Johns Hopkins issued the correction and is making efforts to publicize the correction.”

Currently, Armstrong School District serves 5,866 students. Some 351 11th and 12th grade students who were once tenth-graders in the Armstrong School District have transferred out of the district and enrolled in Lenape Technical School.

Lenape Technical School is a full-day, comprehensive vo-tech school near Ford City. Students can choose to go there and become Lenape Tech students, eventually graduating and earning a Lenape Tech diploma. Lenape Tech students are not reported as members by the Armstrong School District. They are reported by Lenape Technical School, which is a separate educational entity.