Monitoring Transitions from High School to College

For self-improvement, school districts are keeping a watchful eye on their graduates’ collegiate experiences

It’s no longer enough for school districts to see their students through to high school graduation, issue a diploma for framing and hope for the best. In an increasingly competitive and technological global economy, K-12 educators are keeping closer tabs on how those graduates are faring in their postsecondary education pursuits.

Making the transition from school to college easier for students is taking shape in several forms. It can include academic preparation during high school that’s better-tailored to the demands of the university classroom or stronger college counseling and mentoring. Most distinctively, some school systems are tracking the performance of their graduates once they reach college. Aligning high school curriculum and standards to what’s expected at the next level is an urgent task for those preparing students to move to the next stage — and, crucially, to stay in college to earn a degree. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only about 56 percent of students attending college graduate within six years.

“We know the biggest barrier to success with college enrollment is academic qualification,” says Eliza Moeller, a research analyst with the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago.

Through her work with the Post Secondary Transition Project, a joint effort between Chicago Public Schools and the University of Chicago Consortium, Moeller has been studying the issues affecting student success in college. “Higher levels of course performance and higher test scores are also predictive,” she says. “We talk to high school principals a lot. There are potholes on the road to college. There must be a college-going culture, with some best practices supporting college-going.”

She cites the increased use of college coaches, a new position, in some four dozen Chicago high schools. Discovering, for example, that many students don’t file their federal financial aid forms, schools can provide appropriate mentoring. As a result of the closer support in the Chicago schools, Moeller says, “applications shot up astronomically. College enrollment rates have gone up in a beautiful straight line.”

Targeted Help

Not surprisingly, the challenge is even more complex for first-generation and low-income students, as well as those whose parents emigrated from other countries. These students often need to take basic composition or math classes when they enter college before they’re able to take credit-bearing courses.

Nor is the need for remediation limited to students from low-income backgrounds. About 25 percent of college freshman enroll in some remedial coursework, according to a new study from Education Reform Now. The same group says 45 percent of students in those courses come from middle-class and upper-income families, and 43 percent of the collegians in remedial courses were attending four-year public or private colleges or two-year private colleges.

Mass Insight, a Boston-based organization committed to closing the achievement gap in public education, has expanded access to Advanced Placement classes in 96 schools. The organization runs teacher training, including a two-week College Board summer institute for 500 AP teachers, as well as a two-day fall training.

“We’re tracking all of the students who attend Mass Insight sites,” says Brett Lane, a researcher with Mass Insight. “We’ve developed data-sharing agreements so we can look deeper.” There are 15,000 students in college currently being tracked. The organization has found that these urban, low-income students are going to four-year colleges at a much higher rate — 80-85 percent and graduating within six years.

Even with a small sample of community colleges, says Lane, they’re seeing lower rates of remediation, passing out of developmental courses at higher rates, and succeeding in credit-bearing courses.

Tracking Students

Clearly, having the ability to track students following high school graduation affects the strategies school districts devise for making the transition to college more effective. The National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit based in Herndon, Va., offers a service known as Student Tracker to generate district-specific information such as how many high school students enroll in college, graduate from college, how long it takes, where they go, do they attend a two- or four-year school and study in or out of state. Some of the 596 school districts in 30 states using this service include Austin, Texas, Newport and Covington, Ky., and Cleveland and Cincinnati, Ohio.

The colleges are as interested in this information as the high schools to make the transition successful.

“Large systems are very plugged into high schools,” says David Hawkins, executive director for content and policy at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, citing the 76,800-student Northern Virginia Community College. “We have tried to make a more deliberate linkage with community colleges and high school counselors.”

The growing use of dual enrollment options is smoothing the path for high schoolers to enroll in entry-level college-level courses.

The District of Columbia Public Schools is expanding dual enrollment options “to promote early college exposure,” says Erin Bibo, deputy chief of college and career education, and to help students understand how colleges work. Facilitating smoother student transitions between high school and college is high on the agenda. (See related article.)

At Howard University, hometown students from the District of Columbia have met with the dean of admissions to understand how one can seek help from college staff when inevitable problems arise. Kim Hanauer, manager of college--preparedness programs in the D.C. Public Schools, says these students “learned that lesson while still in high school. They see it as a sign of strength, not a sign of failure.”

The district explored where its students were matriculating and identified three institutions — Trinity College in D.C., George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., where a significant number of its graduates enroll each year. The school district formed partnerships with these institutions to better promote recruitment dates and admissions opportunities to gauge what might change access and performance.

The school district is eager to monitor how its graduates fare once they land at postsecondary institutions as a way of assessing what improvements can be made in the college-preparatory arena. The central office is analyzing how the district’s graduates are performing academically at a handful of institutions in the area.

“It can be very complicated for a district,” says Bibo. “It’s not ‘snap your finger and do it.’ We’re sharing data with school leadership so they can think about next steps. If the enrollment rate is low, how can they get it higher? If school choice seems to be an issue, how can they improve outcomes?”

In Englewood, Colo., the 3,000-student district is partnering with the local community college to smooth the transition to college and raising the likelihood of graduating with a degree.

Since 2008, Englewood students have been able to take college classes in a concurrent--enrollment program at Arapahoe Community College with the district paying the tuition charges. “We know that students who are exposed to college-level courses are much more likely to go on to postsecondary education,” says Diana Zakhem, director of postsecondary and workforce readiness at Englewood High School.

Englewood has aligned English classes for the past three years so students taking senior English know it is equivalent to entry-level English in the Colorado Community College system. The students’ transcripts will show they are eligible for college-level work. The same alignment was completed in math in 2015.

“It doesn’t end at high school,” says Diane L. Hegeman, vice president for instruction at Arapahoe Community College, which works with 30 high schools in seven school districts in the Denver area, reaching 3,600 students. She says the collaboration is about asking, “What are the additional services and assistance we can provide the school district to improve resiliency and persistence? We’re not offering developmental courses. We align the curriculum in teaching high school subjects, so they’re college ready, which decreases the need for remediation. That increases their chances for success.”

The numbers suggest the approach is working. For the class of 2009, 52.1 percent required college remediation in at least one subject. For the class of 2012, the needle had dropped to 45.7 percent.

Easing Affordability

In the Fitchburg, Mass., district, about 50 students are participating in a dual enrollment program at Fitchburg State University and Mount Wachushett Community College. They receive college ID cards, giving them access to the campus library and other facilities. If the students maintain a 3.5 average, they receive automatic acceptance to Fitchburg State and a $2,500 scholarship. They enter with college credits, too.

“It’s about affordability,” says Andre Ravenelle, superintendent of the Fitchburg schools for the past decade. “If they get in, they stay in.”

He bases that claim on a tracking system at Fitchburg State and the nearby community college that follows the progress of the local students. Fitchburg High guidance counselors and teachers also monitor the progress of students in the dual enrollment courses. “Our dropout rate has been going down, and our college acceptance rate has increased,” says Ravenelle, a former administrator in the Boston suburbs of Chelsea and Lexington.

Fitchburg is one of six school districts in Massachusetts participating with a nonprofit entity, Step Up to Excellence, aimed at ensuring financial access and academic fitness for those college-bound. The objective, Ravenelle says, is to “send our 12th graders to college not needing remediation. … What we’re trying to do is fill in gaps in the student’s life.”

Step Up to Excellence provides coaches who begin working with students in 7th grade on college expectations. Teachers receive stipends when they chaperone college tours, some students are funded for museum tours, and for some high school students, a semester abroad.

A two-year-old initiative in Newton, Mass., targets students who will be the first in their families to attend college. During the past year, 36 students, many from low-income or single-family homes, participated in dinner sessions on the college application process, comparing financial aid packages and essay writing. The program offered transportation and guided tours of six area colleges and technical institutes.

Jennifer Price, superintendent in North Andover, Mass., former principal at Newton North High School, says the concept behind Transitioning Together is ”can we provide something for the first generation that will support their families? We match parents experienced with the college process with families that are struggling.”

One hundred percent of the cohort has been accepted to at least one college for this fall. Transitioning Together will continue to connect with the graduates on the campuses they are attending, to help with adjustments to college academics and other aspects of the college life.

As Price says, “Our kids are getting into colleges and getting huge amounts of merit aid and financial aid. They really do incredibly well. We ask colleges and universities about first generation support.”

Collegiate Connections

School districts’ partnerships with colleges make a significant difference. In some cases, two-year and four-year institutions are paying closer attention to student performance in the critical first year and sharing those details

University of Texas at Austin uses data dashboards for targeting services and supports for freshmen who are identified at risk of not surviving their first year. Several community colleges, such as Hostos in the South Bronx, Wyoming’s Laramie County Community College and Montgomery County Community College in suburban Philadelphia, track students to see how they’re performing in their college work. Faculty at some colleges can flag students who aren’t attending classes or are struggling to keep up.

“There’s been an effort to make advances in first-generation, low-income, minority and ethnic students,” says Hawkins of the National Association of College Admission Counseling. “With equity and access, they’re thinking differently. … They need supports to keep engaged, and the colleges need to be aware of barriers in the admissions and enrollment process.”

One new approach, Hawkins says, is for college admissions offices to require entry-level staff in admissions, financial aid and student affairs departments to receive cross-training in other areas of the college that relate to student recruitment and retention. These staff follow a cohort of students through their undergraduate experience.

Yet no magic formulas have surfaced for guaranteeing a successful high school to college transition. As the University of Chicago’s Moeller says, “I think we don’t understand the mechanisms out there. If it were an easy answer, we’d know by now. A college-ready culture makes a difference for college enrollment, not completion.