Does your (large public) school keep track of college graduation rates?

Parents Social Lounge
1

<p>Does your large public school keep track of its graduates once they enter college and specifically, the percentage of graduates who actually earn bachelors degrees? If so, what is the method of keeping track of 600-800 kids?</p>

<p>Ours doensn't keep track at all. I know SO MANY kids who have dropped out of college after a year or two. It seems disingenuous for the school to brag about how many AP courses its students take, how prepared they are for college, how many go to college, and when the reality is that, in my state, the majority of those who enter college will not have a degree after 6 years.</p>

2

<p>One thing that the NYC DOE is proposing that schools be evaluated on how their students do the first two years after leaving high school. However, there are so many things that are beyond the control of the high school.</p>

<p>Read enough threads from parents right here on CC, talking about how their stellar high school students had, missteps during their first year of college. If you are going to point a finger and place a blame, who would you point the finger at? Would it be the school, the college, the parent or the student.</p>

<p>Students are leave or are unsuccessful for a variety of reasons:
Some can be inadequate high school prep, some students are not emotionally or socially ready to go away to school. </p>

<p>Some kids find that the school is not a good fit for them and transfer.</p>

<p>What at the beginning may have been a financial aid package that a family though they could swing, ends up becoming a real burden on the family. </p>

<p>Some kids let the good times roll at the expenses of their gpa, some kinds go through roommate issues, the bf or gf they left at home and now can’t live without. </p>

<p>Some kids realize that they could benefit from take a break from school for a few years. They work, return and eventually get a degree. </p>

<p>What would you really hope to learn as far as keeping track of how many students leave your high school and get a degree? A raw number with out the reasons behind it is meaningless. I would not have shown up on my high school’s 4 year graduation rate, because my parent’s died while I was in college and I had a 14 year old brother to take care of. I went to work, full time (kid had to eat), eventually went back to school at night, graduated and then completed 3 Masters. At what point should my high school know that I have achieved this?</p>

<p>How do you propose to get the information. You can send out post graduation surveys, but who will do the follow up work year after year and who will pay for it? How do you know that graduates would be willing to share personal information with a school that they no longer to attend.</p>

<p>Live on a few more days and you will find that there are many paths that will take you where you need to go. Life does not always happen in a linear progression and it is indeed what happens when you are making other plans.</p>

3

<p>My point is that I have this idea that the school actually thinks its students are, by and large, receiving college degrees, when in fact they are not. </p>

<p>I am on a “college and career” committee at the HS…the action items that have been proposed sound like “Career Day” at elem school. I’d love for us to try to identify why certain students don’t succeed and see if we can help at risk students before they encounter problems. I’m not talking about the stereotypical “at risk” student…I’m talking about the high SAT/NHS member students who don’t succeed.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>That was my question - if a school does it, how do they do it?</p>

4

<p>Does your large public school keep track of its graduates once they enter college and specifically, the percentage of graduates who actually earn bachelors degrees? If so, what is the method of keeping track of 600-800 kids?</p>

<p>No they don’t.
They also don’t keep track of #s of kids who live in the city, but don’t attend city schools, the # of kids who drop out before high school or the numbers of kids who begin post high school education.
Hell, they don’t even keep track of if any of their programs they undertake to improve education are making progress- they usually just switch to another program every couple years- & * I thought* I was inefficient!</p>

<p>About getting the info- while our PTAs have paid for teachers & even buildings ( to lease portables), this sounds like something that a PTA or possibly a group like a business council ( depending on size of town) would be interested in.</p>

<p>I think it would be a great point to use- our schools educate this # of students who graduate from college.</p>

5

<p>

</p>

<p>And maybe they don’t do this* because *they are *public *schools. I know that private schools make such statements.</p>

6

<p>

</p>

<p>All you would be able to “account” for are students who did not receive degrees within 4 to 6 years post high school. But college is not going anywhere and many students go to college at different stages of their lives. </p>

<p>I spent a lot of years in corporate life doing adult education workplace learning and coordinating college programs at a company that provides 100% tuition remission. The number of adult learners going or returning to college is not lagging far behind the number of freshmen attending college. Again, how will you account for students who go to college later in life?</p>

7

<p>

</p>

<p>I wouldn’t. I also wouldn’t account for the semi-literate guy who becomes a multi-millionare real estate developer with no college at all. I want to account for the kids who were pushed to take loads of AP classes so the school can be on the Newsweek Top 100 HS list…of all those kids from the “fantastic suburban public school” who are allegedly so well prepared for college…WERE they? If the college success rates are really bad, might they want to think of changing something?</p>

8

<p>I want to account for the kids who were pushed to take loads of AP classes so the school can be on the Newsweek Top 100 HS list…of all those kids from the “fantastic suburban public school” who are allegedly so well prepared for college…WERE they? If the college success rates are really bad, might they want to think of changing something?</p>

<p>I don’t think you even have to look at the numbers who graduate from college-
just look at the #s of their AP test * scores*.
Are they getting 3’s, 4’s, 5’s? or 1’s & 2’s?</p>

9

<p>

</p>

<p>I can narrow it down even further then, if you want…how about the college success rate of the students who got 3s, 4s and 5s?</p>

<p>Here’s an idea to start with…how about voluntary reporting/tracking of the NHS members? It could be anonymous, to account for the “shame of failure” factor.</p>

10

<p>I was thinking more about kids who were still in high school, not even high school grads, let alone college grads.</p>

<p>I would just like to know the test scores- by district/school/course of students who take APs.
Since the only thing that USNews/Newsweek trumpets is the numbers of students that * take the tests* I want to see the numbers of students who are paying out $80 a pop, for tests that didn’t help them in the least.</p>

<p>Our district is spending a lot of money to increase AP courses/tests, even in schools that already had IB programs.
There are many reasons why I have a problem with this.
The money- $80 is a lot of money, my oldest only applied to 5 colleges because of the app fees, & in most cases that was $30-$40.
The courses- our district is all but forcing schools to dismantle successful & popular courses & trying to replace with AP.
They also are replacing more difficult AP courses with " easier" ones, that don’t even cover same material.
AP Geography instead of Ap Euro for example.</p>

11

<p>This report does not address your particular question, but might indicate why high schools would not be that interested to follow this metric.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www3.northern.edu/rc/pages/Reading_Clinic/highschool_graduation.pdf[/url]”>http://www3.northern.edu/rc/pages/Reading_Clinic/highschool_graduation.pdf&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>This said, there are statistics that are quoted regarding the number of students who enter high school and end up graduating from college. This weekend I saw a report that only 3% of black students who enter HS in Chicago ever obtain a college degree. This should indicate that some people do maintain or estimate the data.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/10/34swanson.h29.html[/url]”>http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/10/34swanson.h29.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

12

<p>I highly doubt you could collect meaningful data. Even if 100% of the kids head off to college immediately following high school or within one year of high school…as someone said you will have kids that fail out, kids that run out of money or can’t afford to continue, kids that get married and intend to continue but never do, kids that decide they’d rather go into a trade program/technical program instead of a 4-year degree, kids that stop and go back in their late twenties or early thirties…none of which has anything to do with the caliber or lack of caliber of the high school. </p>

<p>I’m not convinced that even if you could track kids post high school that the numbers that actually complete an undergraduate degree (and isn’t the national average somewhere around half?) is reflective of the caliber of the high school…probably more aligned with family income and parental education attained…</p>

13

<p>We do hear about some of the AP scores and pass rates…by teachers who send emails to the parents after the results, bragging about things like “65% 4 or 5 and 80% pass rate.” But when you don’t hear…is it that the teacher is too busy, or is the teacher ashamed?(e.g. of my son getting a nice A on AP Comp Sci and a 1 on the AP exam.)</p>

<p>The efforts of some of the lower performing schools to increase AP test rates is silly. Son has a friend who went to a school where the one kid who got a 3 on APUSH was a school legend…because no one from their school ever passed AP exams.</p>

14

<p>

</p>

<p>The 6 year grad rate in Texas is in the 45% range. I recently read an article on the state’s poor college completion rate, in the context of the state budget crisis. The legislator who was bringing it up was strongly insinuating that too many “at risk” kids were being admitted and that we were just wasting tax dollars on them. I don’t really agree.</p>

15

<p>Some numbers for Texas:</p>

<p>[PolitiFact</a> Texas | Hochberg says only one third of Texas college students graduate](<a href=“http://politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/jul/13/scott-hochberg/hochberg-says-only-one-third-texas-college-student/]PolitiFact”>http://politifact.com/texas/statements/2010/jul/13/scott-hochberg/hochberg-says-only-one-third-texas-college-student/)</p>

<p>That means that of the students who entered a four-year public university in Texas in the fall of 2002, 57 percent graduated within six years, by September 2009. That includes students who transferred to another public or private school in Texas. </p>

<p>Of some 300,000 Texas students who were enrolled in 7th grade in 1997-98, about 63,800 later enrolled in a four-year school, like the University of Texas, while 90,800 enrolled in a two-year school, like Austin Community College. That is, about 60 percent of students pursuing post-secondary education go the community college route.</p>

<p>Their graduation rate is far lower. Of the students enrolled full time at a community college in the fall of 2002, the board found that only 11 percent graduated within three years, by 2005.</p>

16

<p>Thanks for all the links. Again, this is on my mind because I am on “college and career” committee at my kids’ school. It would be great if we could do something meaningful to assist in future success, rather than having a nurse, a lawyer and an airline pilot come talk to the kids.</p>

17

<p>Actually, Missypie, you ARE on to something. But, it is bigger than your work right now and could take more than just one year to turn into something substantial. Someone out there has some sort of committee reports. May be DoE or “math teachers assn” or? Eg, the math folks have stats looking at college success for kids who took calculus in hs.* (I don’t remem the exact details- may be for low economic groups; may have tracked grad rates or just first two years.)<br>
Last time I checked (2-3 years ago,) AP curricula were high school-based. Each had to go through an approval process and hit the minimum subject coverage. After that, it was anyone’s guess whether they were effective. Even lousy high schools can put forth APs. Some top high schools focus on test prep versus just the material. </p>

<p>As someone noted, nearly every college tracks its grad rates, usually grad w/i 6 years. It’s part of “Institutional Research” at the college. Depending on where you are, you may be able to speak with these folks and get pointed in some direction. Great project.</p>

<ul>
<li>the critique was that kids motivated to take calc in hs may already be better prepared for college work.</li>
</ul>

<p>-you could poll NHS kids from one sample class 5 years after hs grad. But, NHS is also not a consistent measure of who the top students are- it’s hs-based, not based on some natl standards, AIUI.</p>

18

<p>Random polling would be better than picking a particular club, by picking a club like NHS you have already introduced bias – kids that are interested in participating (only one out of my three had any interest in joining NHS). Actually our public hired a college based research organization in our state to poll my S1’s class last year and they called our home “looking for him”. At the time he was a college junior. I have no idea if he participated in the research although I did forward the phone number to him. All it told me was that someone is interested in this concept. I’m still not convinced it tells you anything about the caliber of the particular high school.</p>

19

<p>FWIW- [College</a> Board—The AP Course Audit Ledger](<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools)</p>

20

<p>

</p>

<p>I agree and all of that information is valuable to a school that is trying to make its students more succesful in college. If, say, 1/3 of those who drop out did so because they/their familly couldn’t afford it, that is vauable information. Students thinking of choosing a school based on merit aid could be advised to pay close attention to the GPA required to keep the aid; maybe they’ll choose the affordable public instead. Students who already feel burned out in HS could be introduced to the concept of a “gap year” and advised on some productive gap year activities.</p>