Dallas Dance, superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools, has found success with programs that allow students to simultaneously pursue a high school diploma and associates degree.
In this collective pursuit for higher achievement by universities, educational organizations and policy makers, often left out of the fold of accountability are high schools across the country — who have been moreso tasked with the obligation of graduating students from secondary institutions with diplomas that are not viable for the demands of sustainable employment opportunities in the country.
In a recent study, “High School Benchmarks: National College Progression Rates,” released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, high school administrators have been presented with data for their introduction into this nationwide call for action.
“We are trying to focus on the role of high schools and make sure high schools aren’t the weak link,” said Dr. Doug Shapiro, executive research director at the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, during a roundtable panel discussion held on Tuesday to highlight the report’s findings.
For the first time, data has been retrieved to offer benchmarks for public high schools to compare their graduates’ college transition rates nationwide. Before now, high school administrators have relied on unfocused student exit interviews and spotty submissions of post-graduate surveys to draw conclusions on the number of students who leave their schools and go on to attend and graduate from college.
But at this point, “it is time to stop believing what our gut tells us and start looking at the data to know what’s truly happening to our students,” said panelist Kim Cook, executive director of the National College Access Network.
The report is a descriptive study of more than 2.3 million high school students’ college transition rates from 2010-’12, based on school-level demographic and geographic characteristics.
