Find out how your local school’s graduates perform in college

The Kentucky Center on Education and Workforce Statistics (KCEWS) has released a new series of high school feedback reports for all the regular high schools (Sorry, nothing for alternative programs) in Kentucky.

These 6-page reports have a lot of interesting data that compares things like average ACT scores in each school to the district wide and statewide averages. The reports also contain information about how well each school prepared its graduates for college success.

The report for your school can be accessed from this web page.

I downloaded the report from my local high school, Dixie Heights High in Edgewood, Kentucky. This school is located in a fairly upscale part of the state and probably has statistics better than average overall.

Here are some of the things I learned.

• The percentage of 2010-11 Dixie graduates who went on to college is higher than the statewide average at 66.3 percent versus a somewhat lower 60.2 percent statewide.

• Sixty-Seven percent of Dixie’s 2010-11 graduates went on to a 4-year college, a much higher proportion than the statewide average of 43 percent. Dixie’s 2010-11 students who went on to a 4-year program posted an ACT Composite Score during their 11th grade in high school of 22.0, slightly higher than the statewide average of 21.9.

• Only 12.8 percent of Dixie’s 2010-11 graduates went on to a 2-year postsecondary program versus 37.8 percent of the graduates across Kentucky.

• A surprise was that Dixie’s 2010-11 graduates who went to an out of state college had an ACT Composite of only 21.5 versus the statewide average of 21.8. In both cases, students going out of state had lower ACT scores than students who stayed in state. I had expected the reverse.

There is also a major problem in the new reports. A successful Freshman year at college for a full-time student should result in passing 30 credit hours of coursework. This is the minimum needed to stay on track to graduate in either two or four years, as appropriate.

Sadly, only 15.3 percent of Dixie’s 2009-10 graduates earned 30 credit hours or more, while the statewide average was hardly different at 15.2 percent.

The report says 59.4 percent of Dixie’s 2009-10 graduates got high enough scores on the ACT to be considered college-ready, but the average number of credit hours attempted for all students, ready or not, was only 25.1 and only 22.8 credit hours were successfully completed, on average. While the report does not break the numbers out separately for those students who supposedly entered college prepared, it looks like there may be a serious problem with the way college preparedness is being measured. I hope someone looks into that, because with only 15 percent of our kids still on track for an on-time graduation after the first year on campus, something is seriously wrong.

In any event, our kids do have some determination. Despite so many falling behind for on-time graduation, the report says 86.2 percent of the Dixie 2009-10 graduates returned for their sophomore year and statewide 78.4 percent did.

Anyway, I don’t have time to look at the 200+ separate high school feedback reports, but if you find more interesting things for a different school, please let me know.