Tag Archives: post secondary

States Should Keep Pushing for College and Career Readiness, Even Under a Pandemic

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As graduation rates have continued to rise across the nation, students increasingly require remediation at the next level. One study found that 50% of two-year college students and 20% of four-year college students required remedial classes, in some cases discouraging those students from persisting in higher education. 

Combined with recent reports of student disengagement during COVID-19 remote learning and concern that high school dropout rates will rise, states must consider how best to provide the support and learning opportunities for their students to graduate college and career ready, even in the midst of a pandemic. Students need to be prepared to pursue economically stable postsecondary pathways in these tenuous times. This demands a variety of opportunities, with the goal of graduation as a starting point for postsecondary success, not simply the finish line of a high school journey. 

In our paper released earlier this month, Chad Aldeman and I look at the data states are collecting around college and career pathways. One encouraging trend is that states have changed their formal high school rating systems beyond graduation rates and test scores to include a host of college- and career-readiness measures. By our count, 34 states plus DC have some form of indicator along these lines. Another 12 states are tracking one of these measures but do not yet hold schools accountable for them. Measuring postsecondary readiness is a crucial step for preparing students to succeed beyond high school and supporting the skills and content knowledge necessary for students so that they don’t require remediation at the next level.

Yet how do you establish high expectations during a pandemic when just getting through the school year seems challenging? One approach might include maintaining a focus on readiness measures, even as graduation criteria shift.

Due to the pandemic, many students in the class of 2020 were permitted to graduate from high school with requirements loosened or waived completely. For example, four midwestern states we reviewed — Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota — eased graduation requirements last spring. These changes are representative of similar measures taken by states across the country. 

Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota all had adjusted cohort graduation rates above 80% in the 2017-18 school year. Presumably, with relaxed standards, their graduation rates for the class of 2020 will be the same or higher. Some of the adjustments they made for easing graduation last spring are noted below: Continue reading →

Choosing a College is Both Art and Science: An Introduction to “Match and Fit”

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Over the coming months, high school seniors across the country will anxiously wait to hear which colleges have accepted them. And after all the hard work of applying comes another tough step: deciding where to go to college. 

How do young people decide where to go to college? Do they pick the most selective school, or do they prioritize the place where their friends are going? Do they stay close to home or get as far away as possible? Big school or small school? Urban or suburban? Public or private? Greek life or geek life? 

There are countless factors to weigh, which can make the college selection process feel overwhelming, particularly for students from low-income backgrounds and those who are the first in their family to attend college. As counselors, advisers, and mentors to young people, we need to build systems and processes that enable them to make informed postsecondary choices.   

Fortunately there’s a useful framework for considering postsecondary options that’s gaining popularity among high school counselors and frontline staff in college access programs: “match and fit.”

While there is no standard definition, practitioners generally agree on the following working definitions: 

  • Match: The degree to which a student’s academic credentials align with the selectivity of the college or university in which they enroll. Match encompasses the quantitative elements of choosing a postsecondary option; it is more science than art.   
  • Fit: A more nebulous concept that refers to how well a prospective student might mesh with an institution once on campus: socially, emotionally, financially, and otherwise. Fit encompasses the qualitative elements of choosing a postsecondary option; it is more art than science. 

Together, these concepts enable students, families, and college counselors to share a common language when talking about college. A student may technically “match” to a particular institution based on their academic credentials, but then decide that school is not a great “fit” given their desires and interests. Conversely, a student might have their heart set on a college — it may seem like a perfect “fit” — but it may turn out to be a poor “match” when the student’s GPA and test scores are considered.  

Importantly, these concepts can be used to support equity in access for underserved students. Here’s how: Continue reading →

Bleak Pictures of Rural Communities Are Not the Full Story

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From lobsters to bikes to HBCUs, Bellwether has covered a breadth of topics tied to rural education over the last six years. While we are by no means the first group to do in-depth research on rural schools and communities, we were among the first in the education reform community to begin thinking critically about policy solutions for rural schools. And as more and more of our peers have turned their attention to the rural context, we’ve realized that there’s a lack of basic understanding of the facts about rural schools and communities. 

To help address that problem, we’ve put together a new resource: “Wide Open Spaces: Schooling in Rural America Today.”

This deck pulls together data and research on education, economic development, and more into a coherent fact base to explain the current state of rural communities and schools. It begins with an overview of the variation of communities within the rural designation in terms of their locations, economies, strengths, and challenges. For example, resort communities like Eagle County (Vail), Colorado and impoverished communities like many along the Mississippi Delta are both considered rural but have dramatically different geographic, economic, educational, and social contexts. Continue reading →

Are Rural High Schools Short-changing Graduates?

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A paradox is at work in rural America.

On the one hand, students in rural schools demonstrate high levels of academic achievement. A higher percentage of students in rural schools achieve proficiency in both math and reading on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) than urban or suburban students. And high schools in rural communities post among the highest graduation rates. On the other hand, graduates from rural high schools are less likely to pursue post-secondary education than their non-rural peers, and rural parts of the country have lower educational attainment levels overall.

With over 65 percent of jobs projected to require some type of post-secondary education in a few short years, ensuring that rural graduates access and complete post-secondary training is critical. So why aren’t rural students going on to college?

Certainly multiple factors contribute to any student’s decision about pursuing post-secondary education regardless of where they live—financial concerns and family factors among them. And these factors are all at play in rural communities. But given the systematic difference in achievement data and graduation rates among rural schools, is there also something systematic about the fall off in post-secondary pursuits among their graduates? And if so, what role can public policy play in addressing it?

In a new paper released by the Rural Opportunities Consortium of Idaho (ROCI), an effort by the JA and Kathryn Albertson Foundation to bring attention and apply rigorous new research efforts to rural education, we aim to address the first question by asking whether the level of rigor in high school academics differs between rural and non-rural high schools. Rigor in high school coursework is the strongest predictor of post-secondary success, eclipsing even external factors like income and other student background characteristics. And while data limitations prevent us from drawing firm conclusions, all the data we analyzed point in the same direction—that rural students may, in fact, experience less rigor in high school.
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