The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s reports are invaluable for the college access and success field, and perhaps their crown jewel is the annual High School Benchmarks report.
This year’s report, the seventh in the series, was released last week and it includes data on postsecondary enrollment for high school students from the class of 2018, persistence for the class of 2016, and completion for the class of 2012. These benchmarks, which are available for low-income and high-minority high schools are an important comparison point for college access and success programs.
Unfortunately, the report’s findings are both familiar to NCAN members and in line with previous releases. Substantial postsecondary enrollment and completion gaps persist between high school graduates of low- and higher-income high schools and low- and high-minority high schools.
A 14 percentage-point gap appeared between low- (55%) and high-income (69%) high school graduates’ first fall enrollment rates for the class of 2018. Students from high-minority high schools (58%) enrolled at a rate 11 percentage points lower than students from low-minority high schools (69%). The disparity was more pronounced between graduates from high-minority, low-income high schools (55%) and low-minority, higher-income high schools (71%).
The report defines low-income high schools as having greater than 50% of students on free or reduced-price lunch. High-minority high schools are those where at least 40% of students are Black or Hispanic.
In terms of completions, 47% of higher-income high school graduates from the class of 2012 completed a college degree (certificates are not included) within six years, compared to 27% of low-income high school graduates. High schools by minority concentration have a similar gap (30% vs. 49%).
The data do not include every high school in the U.S., just those participating in the StudentTracker for High Schools service, but the sample is still massive. The sample includes over 1 million students per graduating class, representing about 40% of the year’s high school graduates. The sample generally “underrepresents rural enrollments and over-represents urban enrollments. The data also slightly over-represent high minority enrollments.”
Unfortunately, the results here are quite stable as compared to previous years. Persistent gaps exist, and minority concentration and income level remain predictive of postsecondary outcomes, which is a trend NCAN and its members are combating every day.
One thing to note, however, is that the absolute completion performance of nearly all groups of graduates by high school type needs improvement. Only one group of graduates, those from low-poverty high schools (where 25% or less of students are on free or reduced-price lunch), has a six-year completion rate greater than 50%. Certainly this is tempered by the fact that the denominator in these metrics is all graduates from a class, college-intending or not. However, given the widely-observed need to have some postsecondary education for the modern economy, the trend is still concerning.
In previous years, NCAN was able to compare the outcomes of member-served students (collected via The Benchmarking Project) to this report series’ results. However, given that NCAN’s latest data collection only included data from the classes of 2011 and 2016, NCAN is unable to make a direct comparison to this report. Despite that, the NSCRC’s High School Benchmarks series remains a critical resource for NCAN members, who should consider their students’ outcomes against those reported here.
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