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On average, low-income urban high schools with high concentrations of minority students sent about half, or 51 percent, of their 2013 graduates to college in the fall immediately following graduation. That could be either a two-year or a four-year college or university. By contrast, 70 percent of the students from high-income urban high schools with few minority students were enrolled in college in the fall. (Only high-income mostly white suburban high schools send more kids to college with 73 percent of the students enrolled in college in the fall).
But these averages mask big differences among public city high schools. This same data show that best 25 percent of the low-income, minority schools — about 130 high schools in the data sample — sent at least 60 percent of their 2013 graduates to college in the fall of 2013. The number was much higher at some. By contrast, the worst 25 percent of the high-income schools — about 60 of them — sent fewer than 60 percent of their graduates to college in the fall. (Low-income means that more than 50 percent of the students qualify for free and reduced price lunch. High minority means that more than 40 percent of the students are black and/or Latino).
“In every category of high school, there are clearly schools that are beating the odds,” said Doug Shapiro, director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, which published the report, “High School Benchmarks 2014.”
This chart shows that 38 percent or fewer of the 2013 high school graduates from the bottom quarter of low-income high schools with high concentrations of minorities went to college in the fall of 2013. But among the top quarter of these low-income high schools, 60 percent or more of the students went to college in the fall.
It’s no surprise that some successful low-income schools would be doing much better than the average low-income school. And I wouldn’t be surprised to hear about a handful of low-income schools, perhaps small magnet schools that cream off the top students, that are doing as well as higher income schools. But what is surprising is that so many low-income schools — 25 percent of them — are doing better than so many of the higher-income schools. You wouldn’t expect such a big overlap, especially when the means for each group are 20 percentage points apart.
This data speaks to both sides of the debate on education reform. Those who says that income determines educational outcomes argue that you can’t reasonably ask schools to overcome a student’s family background. And they can point to the data here which show that students who attend higher income city high schools, on average, are 37 percent more likely to go straight to college than a student from a low income high school. Indeed, the fact that 75 percent of the high-income schools have more students going to college than 75 percent of the low-income schools is great evidence for those who say that income matters.
But the beating the odds data is music to the ears of the so-called school reformers who argue that better schools and teachers can get better student results. The fact that a quarter of the low-income schools are outperforming the high-income schools is exactly the kind of data that supports their cause. Interestingly, none of these are charter high schools. The National Student Clearinghouse excluded charters from the analysis because it was concerned that its charter school participants were too few to be nationally representative.
The National Student Clearinghouse isn’t revealing which high schools are outperforming or underperforming. But it hopes to publish the names of the high performing high schools in the future so that their practices can be studied and replicated. “Possibly next year,” said Afet Dundar, associate director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
While the National Student Clearinghouse is now tracking a giant data set of 3.5 million high school graduates from 2010 to 2013, a big shortcoming is that the data isn’t a nationally representative sample. It includes only student data from high schools who voluntarily participate in StudentTracker, a service that the National Student Clearinghouse markets to high schools so that they can see where their graduates end up. More than 3,000 high schools in all 50 states participate, covering 25 percent all high school graduates in the country. The participation rate is even higher in urban districts where 65 percent of the largest 100 districts participate, covering 40 percent of all urban high school graduates.The National Student Clearinghouse didn’t reveal which districts are or are not participating and so it is unclear how the missing high schools might be skewing the data.
Another shortcoming is that the data don’t give you a sense of how the students are faring in college. It does not reveal if the students are taking remedial classes, essentially repeating what they should have learned in high school. And we don’t have data yet on whether these students are eventually graduating from college.
This is the second year of the National Student Clearinghouse’s high school report and there aren’t enough years yet to show trends as to whether more kids are going to college than in the past. But it’s a welcome additional data point, beyond standardized test scores, to see which high schools are doing a good job.
