Tracking Our Progress: Post-secondary Outcomes and Implications for Our Practice - Todd Bloom, Ph.D. Chief Academic Officer Emily Kissane Policy ...
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Tracking Our Progress:
Post-secondary Outcomes and
Implications for Our Practice
Todd Bloom, Ph.D.
Chief Academic Officer
Emily Kissane
Policy Analyst
December 2011
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Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................... 3
Background: The Role of Data ................................................................................. 4
The Importance of P-12 and Post-secondary Data Sharing ...................................... 6
Current Status of Statewide Data Systems ............................................................... 7
Using Data to Analyze and Improve Student and System Outcomes ...................... 9
Future Drivers of Integrating Data Analysis with Policy and Practice .................. 10
Expansion of postsecondary options .......................................................................... 10
Development of student-driven data sharing .............................................................. 10
Growth in online learning ............................................................................................ 10
Completion of statewide data systems ........................................................................ 11
Appendix................................................................................................................. 12
References............................................................................................................... 16
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Introduction
As P-12 education leaders look for strategies to improve students’ academic achievement and growth,
they are taking a more comprehensive view of the education pipeline, seeking closer ties to post-
secondary education to gain a greater understanding of what happens to their students as they transition
from high school. That transition—and the nature of the education pipeline itself—is becoming more
complex in response to expectations that the P-12 system ensure that every high school graduate is ready
for both college and career, with many potential pathways to success. Facilitating such expectations
requires an equally complex infrastructure of policy and practice centered on student achievement. For
that infrastructure is to be successful in promoting student growth, it must be supported by robust data
systems that provide information on each student and on the education pipeline as a whole.
This paper explains the educational imperative to collect, share and use student performance data
throughout the entire P-20 education system. It describes the progress being made in developing
longitudinal data systems and explores the macro trends that will influence and shape these systems as we
move forward.
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Background: The Role of Data
Recent education reform efforts have focused on standards and accountability as primary drivers of
improved school performance and student achievement. The current version of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA), No Child Left Behind, specifically emphasizes performance and
outcomes data, requiring reporting at the school, district, and state levels that disaggregates information
by gender, race and other criteria. In order to generate the mandated reports, school districts and states
have to access, validate, and analyze data at a level higher than ever required before. As a result, states, in
particular, have begun to invest in and create comprehensive data systems. These efforts started as a
means to more efficiently collect and report the student performance data required by ESEA, but as the
systems developed, educators have seen the potential of these data to transform education by informing
school district success and opportunities for intervention at the school and even classroom levels.
Policymakers also have recognized the possibilities of statewide data systems. Improved information
about student achievement can strengthen accountability and bring greater focus to the goals they set for
the education system. These factors, coupled with federal and state efforts to improve economic
competitiveness, refined the definition of educational success to mean that each high school graduate
would be college and career ready. Recent federal programs and reform efforts have been premised on
this new definition of success. Increasing college degree completion has been a key goal of President
Barack Obama’s administration, with college and career readiness emphasized in competitive grant
programs funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In particular, this goal was a
key priority of the competitive grants awarded to states under Race to the Top (U.S. Department of
Education, 2010a).
Common Core State Standards (CCSS), a national initiative to bring consistency and increased rigor to
core subject area standards across states, also reflects the importance of college and career readiness in
the federal reform agenda. While states are not required to sign on to the CCSS, adoption of these
standards was a requirement for Race to the Top funding. This significant federal funding carrot, offered
during the height of the U.S. fiscal crisis, led to all but eight states adopting the standards (as of June
2011). The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, in
consultation with practitioner experts and an advisory group made of representatives from key education
organizations, lead the CCSS initiative.
“The goal of ensuring that each student graduates from high school ready for
college and career invites a P-20 approach that includes stakeholders from
throughout early childhood, elementary, secondary and postsecondary
education.”
As part of round one of the Race to the Top grants, $350 million was set aside to develop assessments
aligned with the CCSS (U.S. Department of Education, 2010b). Two consortia of states—Partnership for
Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium—
lead the effort. The groups are developing summative assessments and interim assessments that will
enable cross-state comparisons of student performance in grades 3-12 (formative assessments are being
developed for K-2). Implementation of these instruments will occur in spring 2014.
Just as policy developments led to increased demand for P-12 student achievement data, trends in higher
education led educators and policymakers to seek information on outcomes for postsecondary students.
Over the past decade, access, retention, degree completion and accountability have become dominant
policy directions for higher education, but stakeholders lacked comprehensive information on individual
students and system performance. To address this data shortage, the National Governors Association
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suggested four steps to designing a post-secondary data system that would give college leaders and
policymakers the information needed for decision-making:
Step 1: Select appropriate student milestones to measure remediation, retention, and attainment.
Step 2: Determine which students to count.
Step 3: Select appropriate benchmarks.
Step 4: Group achievement rates by student population and institution. (National Governors
Association, 2009).
The goal of ensuring that each student graduates from high school ready for college and career invites a
P-20 approach that includes stakeholders from throughout early childhood, elementary, secondary and
postsecondary education. Success will depend on the degree to which P-12 and postsecondary leaders can
collaborate on programs that promote early awareness of and planning for college as well as how well
they can articulate expectations for students who seek education beyond high school. Strong P-20
collaboration also can provide support to students at critical milestones and as they transition from
secondary education to new learning opportunities. To optimize the P-20 approach, however, robust data
systems will be imperative.
© 2012 Hobsons, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
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The Importance of P-12 and Post-secondary
Data Sharing
Higher quality data that tracks students throughout their educational experience provides a better basis for
data-driven decision making and planning than traditional information systems. With access to post-
secondary data, educators can extend school and district goals for student outcomes to include post-
secondary success. Closer connections between parts of the education system promote collaboration
between P-12 and higher education leaders to further strategies for college and career readiness and
increased degree completion.
Many states are reinforcing and expanding these partnerships with P-16 or P-20 councils that typically
include representation from the state’s workforce development agency and other executive and legislative
groups (Chamberlin and Plucker, 2008). Strengthening partnerships between P-12 and post-secondary
education has potential to further the college and career readiness agenda and to improve outcomes for
students at each point in the education pipeline. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC), a collaborative effort
of education and other organizations to promote the availability and use of data, argues, “as more data are
available, the power of predictive analysis will help educators tailor the academic courses, programs and
teaching practices that are proving to be effective for helping all kids graduate from high school ready for
college success (Data Quality Campaign, 2008, p. 1).
In addition to educators, policymakers benefit from access to robust outcomes data that tracks students
throughout the education pipeline. Beyond having better information with which to assess policies and
expenditures, policymakers gain an improved understanding of the interrelationships of P-12 and higher
education. Current statewide data systems generally are limited to in-state institutions, but ideally student
outcomes should be recorded regardless of where individuals attend. Students who stop out of higher
education (i.e. temporarily withdraw rather than drop out entirely) generally are lost to the system, along
with the insights that could be gained from understanding their experiences. Instead, those students
should continue to be tracked when they return to work towards and complete degrees. This type of
richer, more complete information can drive progress towards standards and accountability measures that
are more closely aligned with the college and career readiness agenda.
Achieve, a bipartisan education reform organization, concludes that “[a] seamlessly integrated, accessible
P-20 longitudinal data system with college and career readiness as its central driver should be a linchpin
of any state’s effort to maximize the impact of its RTTT strategy. These systems provide educators and
decision-makers with critical pieces of information about student achievement and school progress and
are foundational to reaching states’ goals of readiness and success (Achieve, 2009).” Beyond
implementation of RTTT, P-20 data systems likely will be a permanent tool for educational leaders,
policymakers and community members because they provide key information about how policies and
practices impact students’ educational success.
The remediation issue provides a case study for the potential for improved data sharing to transform
practice and policy: Approximately 36 percent of first-year college students in 2007-2008 reported taking
a remedial course (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). As these percentages increase, so does
the cost for states and post-secondary institutions. Colorado’s in-state colleges, for example, spent $19
million on remediation during the 2009-2010 academic year, up from $13 million the previous year
(Robles, 2011). With robust communication channels in place between higher education and P-12, data
on inadequate preparation—ideally with detail such as which disciplines require the most remediation—
could inform a strategy for improving curriculum, instruction and student support.
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Current Status of Statewide Data Systems
The Data Quality Campaign developed Ten Essential Elements, which every state has agreed to
implement by September 2011. The Ten Elements, along with the complementary Ten State Actions, are
intended to ensure that education data systems are linked, accessible to stakeholders and integrated into
efforts to improve student achievement.
Table 1: Data Quality Campaign’s Keys to Effective State Data Systems
Ten Essential Elements Ten State Actions
1. Statewide student identifier 1. Link data systems
2. Student-level enrollment data 2. Create support for state data system
3. Student-level test data 3. Develop governance structures
4. Information on untested students 4. Build state data repositories
5. Statewide teacher identifier with teacher- 5. Provide timely access
student match
6. Student-level transcript data 6. Create student-level progress reports
7. Student-level college readiness assessments 7. Create longitudinal reports to guide system-wide
improvement
8. Student-level graduation and drop-out data 8. Develop P-20 research agenda
9. Match student-level P-12 and higher 9. Promote professional development
education data
10. State data audit system 10. Raise awareness of available data
Source: www.dataqualitycampaign.org
How do state data systems compare to this framework and the overall data needs for education
stakeholders? Although states have made good progress in a short period of time, the data systems often
lose track of students, leaving educators and policymakers without the knowledge that could be derived
from those students’ experiences and outcomes. Specifically, state data systems often are not able to
connect students’ K-12 information with their post-secondary records for reasons ranging from state data
policies to disconnects between education sectors. Also, systems can lack specific data points that make
for an incomplete picture of students’ education paths. Federal and state reports, for example, often
exclude students who stop out of higher education meaning that those students are not tracked when they
return and complete degrees.
“Of the 45 states (including the District of Columbia) that have post-secondary
student record systems, 32 keep K-12 data, and 15 include workforce, wage and
other labor statistics.”
According to the State Higher Education Executive Officers, 44 states and the District of Columbia have
post-secondary student record systems. Thirty-nine of those states include data for public two- and four-
year institutions, while the remaining six states include either two- or four-year public colleges. Nineteen
states collect data from independent nonprofit colleges, and seven states include for-profit institutions
(State Higher Education Executive Officers, 2010). The trend is towards including the full range of
colleges and universities.
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Of the 45 states (including the District of Columbia) that have post-secondary student record systems, 32
keep K-12 data, and 15 include workforce, wage and other labor statistics. In general, the highest quality
data results from data sharing or other formal links with state education and workforce agencies. As of
2010, eleven states have agreements between K-12 education agencies and the post-secondary data
systems, eleven states have agreements between workforce agencies and post-secondary data systems,
and 15 states have agreements between both education and workforce agencies and post-secondary data
systems (State Higher Education Executive Officers, 2010).
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Using Data to Analyze and Improve Student
and System Outcomes
In addition to creating data systems that make appropriate links between early childhood, K-12 and post-
secondary education—as well as workforce and other relevant agencies—the education system needs to
build internal capacity so that it can make best use of the data to raise student achievement. States face
the challenges of designing protocols to analyze the data, sharing the findings with stakeholders so that
the information can be used proactively, and communicating with the public in a way that is both clear
and relevant. As statewide data systems are being built, schools and districts can bridge the gap to make
best use of data so that students have optimal outcomes.
To be able to bridge the gap, educators need additional data sources to track their students’ outcomes and
to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of their policies and practices. An example of such a source is
the National Student Clearinghouse®, a nonprofit organization created by the higher education
community that specializes in student enrollment and degree verification. Over 3,300 colleges and
universities participate in the Clearinghouse, representing 92 percent of students in the U.S. A product of
this partnership is a database of 100 million post-secondary enrollment and degree records.
Naviance allows schools to import student outcomes data from StudentTracker High School files.
Naviance clients who want this information must subscribe to the StudentTracker service from National
Student Clearinghouse; Naviance provides the data import functionality. Linking these sets of data gives
educators a more complete picture of students’ experiences as they transition through the education
pipeline. Naviance records rich information about each K-12 student’s educational experience, including
assessment scores, course-taking patterns, grade point average and participation in college and career
planning activities. National Student Clearinghouse data provides information about post-secondary
education, including access (who continues to college or university), enrollment (where they choose to
attend), persistence (who stays enrolled, transfers to a different institution or stops out) and completion
(time to degree and credentials obtained).
Naviance has reporting features for alumni tracking that will help schools use these data and
communicate results with the public and other stakeholders. Staff can analyze the post-secondary
outcomes for students who participated in certain activities or shared specific characteristics. Examples of
these reports are included in this report’s appendix.
Currently, many schools rely on alumni surveys to gather information about post-secondary plans and
attendance. While these surveys are valuable tools, they provide anecdotal evidence on student
performance and outcomes. With information such as that provided though the National Student
Clearinghouse, schools have access to verifiable post-secondary outcomes data with which to assess the
effectives of curriculum changes and other interventions. By analyzing the preparation received by
students who perform well at college, P-12 leadership teams can reverse engineer polices and practices
which have proven results. If the findings are shared more broadly, P-20 councils and other policymaking
organizations can assess the effectiveness of policy interventions.
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Future Drivers of Integrating Data Analysis
with Policy and Practice
The following trends or developments are likely to shape how longitudinal data systems evolve and how
they impact education as we move forward:
Expansion of post-secondary options
Pathways to Prosperity, a Harvard Graduate School of Education’s report on college and career readiness,
argues that that education practice and policy in the United States are oriented primarily towards college
readiness, with a successful student outcome defined as a four-year degree. The authors cite low rates of
degree completion and high teen unemployment as evidence that focus is too narrow, leaving the students
who do not obtain post-secondary credentials without the skills necessary to transition smoothly from
school to a career.
Because many students who drop out don’t see a clear connection between their studies and future career
opportunities, the report proposes that high school students should be provided with an array of pathways,
each of which includes preparation for a post-secondary degree or credential that is aligned with the
student’s chosen career objective.
This development would expand the types and number of post-secondary institutions included in data
analysis efforts. With the increased emphasis on workforce development and work-based learning, linking
educational achievement data with occupational/career outcomes would be crucial. Expanding the number
of pathways for student success would benefit from expanded partnerships between the education
community and workforces development agencies, employers and community members.
Development of student-driven data sharing
Giving students access to appropriate data helps them to know, understand and own their performance,
and can give them the necessary tools to improve. The expanded collection of data and completed data
systems could enable students to connect with peers who have shared characteristics or experiences, such
as course-taking patterns or extracurricular interests. The creation of these affinity groups would facilitate
students learn from each other.
Growth in online learning
Future technology developments are likely to increase the popularity of online learning—not only formal
courses, but also a diverse range of learning opportunities. Models that blend online with face-to-face
instruction create the flexibility to deliver content in the most appropriate and effective manner and
alleviate much of the concern some educators have about online-only courses. This growth in online
learning affects P-12 and higher education and tends to increase student ownership of learning at all
levels. Data will need to be collected on these new options, particularly to evaluate their effectiveness for
improving student outcomes.
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Completion of statewide data systems
Within the next five to seven years, the statewide longitudinal data systems currently under development
should reach maturity. States likely will have the capacity to collect information about students who
attend college in a different state and to track students who return to school for training, certification or
degree completion. The cooperative agreements between educational institutions and workforce agencies
necessary to complete each state’s data system will facilitate the linking of education and career
information.
Increasing the amount of information shared across the P-20 continuum has high value for student
achievement and for the responsiveness and improvement of each part of the education system. With the
capacity to collect data on a student’s course enrollment, goals, interests and outcomes as he or she
progresses though high school, and then track the student through post-secondary completion, the P-20
system will have the tools to develop and evaluate best practices for college and career readiness.
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Appendix
Examples of Naviance reports using National Student Clearinghouse data:
Figure 1: Percentage of students with each current enrollment/completion status
Figure 2: Percentage of students earning an AA degree within a period of time
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Figure 3: Percentage of students earning a BA/BS degree within a period of time
Figure 4: Students in a specific GPA range that earned a BA degree within 6 years
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Figure 5: Students in a specific SAT range that earned BA/BS degree within 6 years
Figure 6: Students in a specific ACT range that earned a BA/BS degree within 6 years
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Figure 7: Students completing AP courses who earned a BA/BS degree within 6 years
Figure 8: Students with an average AP score who earned a BA degree within 6 years
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References
Achieve (2009). Accelerating College and Career Readiness in States: P-20 Longitudinal Data Systems.
Retrieved May 5, 2011, from http://www.achieve.org/files/RTTT-P20LongitudinalData.pdf
Chamberlin, Molly and Plucker, Jonathan (2008). P-16 Education: Where are we going? Where have we
been? Phi Delta Kappan, 89 (7), 472-479.
Data Quality Campaign (2008). Developing and Supporting P-20 Education Data Systems: Different
States, Different Models. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Data Quality Campaign (2010). Annual survey. Retrieved May 5, 2011, from
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/stateanalysis/executive_summary/
Data Quality Campaign (2011). State-District Alignment. Retrieved May 5, 2011, from
http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/build/issues/state-district-alignment
National Center for Education Statistics (2011). The Condition of Education. Retrieved June 13, 2011,
from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_rmc.asp
National Governors Association (2009). Issue Brief: Measuring Student Achievement at Postsecondary
Institutions. Washington, D.C.: Author.
Robles, Yesenia (2011, February 15). More Colorado high schoolers graduating, but many still need
remedial classes. The Denver Post. Retrieved from http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_17345696
State Higher Education Executive Officers (2010). Strong Foundations: The State of Postsecondary Data
Systems. Boulder, CO: Author.
Symonds, William C., Robert Schwartz, and Ronald F. Ferguson (2011). Pathways to prosperity: Meeting
the challenge of preparing young Americans for the 21st century. Cambridge, MA: Pathways to
Prosperity Project, Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
U.S. Department of Education. (2010a). Race to the Top: Application for Phase 2 funding. Washington,
DC: Author. Retrieved May 13, 2011, from http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/phase2-
application.doc
U.S. Department of Education. (2010b). Race to the Top Assessment Program: Executive summary.
Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved May 13, 2011, from http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop-
assessment/executive-summary- 042010.pdf
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