Data that Matters: Giving High Schools Useful Feedback on Grads’ Outcomes
by Anne Hyslop
Education Sector
President Obama has called for increasing the number of students with college degrees by roughly 50 percent by 2020. But there is growing evidence to suggest that high school graduates are not getting what they need to succeed in postsecondary education or on the job. Thirty-eight percent of students who enter American colleges — and 60% who enter community colleges — are referred to remedial classes before they can enroll in credit-bearing courses. To provide data on how well high schools are doing to prepare their graduates for college, the federal government’s Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems grant program has awarded more than $515 million to states to help them track students by linking high school, college and workforce databases. Hopefully, educators will use this data to target areas for improvement.
