Opinion: How Can Schools Advise Students When They Don't Know How Their Grads Are Doing?
Imagine a principal tasked with reducing chronic absenteeism for her senior class. She relies on student data systems to analyze attendance numbers, broken down by demographics. Now imagine that the most recent data is two years old. How can she address current challenges with stats from when the seniors were sophomores?
Fortunately, real-time attendance data is standard in most districts. Yet when it comes to understanding what happens to students after high school — trade school or college enrollment, persistence and completion — many schools are left with years-old, incomplete or nonexistent information. Without timely insights, schools cannot meaningfully evaluate or improve practices, interventions or partnerships.
Nationwide, schools are making concerted efforts to improve college and career outcomes, but they are hamstrung by data limitations. School and district leaders often turn to publicly available state report cards which provide a snapshot of postsecondary enrollment information. At best, these report cards include data from the previous year's graduating class — though, in many cases, the snapshots are even older. This gap is a serious issue. School and district leaders, as well as the public, need timely access to this data to make informed decisions and improve college and career advising practices.
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The National Student Clearinghouse database, containing enrollment and completion data from over 3,500 colleges nationwide, is shared with the vast majority of states three times a year and includes updates on the most recent graduating class. States could combine these statistics with, for example, employment data from their department of labor to offer school districts a comprehensive view of student outcomes after high school. However, most states fail to make clearinghouse data accessible in their publicly available report cards and, based on OneGoal's experiences in seven states — Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas and Wisconsin — this information is also not shared directly with districts.
Our district partners in those seven states report that none received the most recent clearinghouse data release from Nov. 27, which includes enrollment information for the class of 2024's first fall semester. In a separate, 50-state analysis of publicly available state reports and postsecondary enrollment data, we found that just 23 states made available college enrollment data from the high school class of 2022, while nine offered only older data. For researchers interested in general postsecondary enrollment trends, this might suffice. But it's not enough for school and district leaders who need timely information to guide their work.
While some districts with adequate resources buy a StudentTracker subscription directly from the clearinghouse, this option is often unknown or unaffordable. It's also unnecessary — states already purchase this data on behalf of districts. But if it's not passed on, school and district leaders can't improve their advising practices for the next graduating class, as they won't understand what happened to the graduating class that just walked across their stage.
Still, in the last several years, school districts nationwide have established novel solutions to build bridges from high school to college, supported by data sharing at the state level:
Wisconsin published class of 2023 enrollment outcomes for the 2023-24 school year in a publicly available portal that offers interactive visualizations of trends over time and disaggregates data by student subgroups. School leaders can securely access individual student-level data to inform their practices.
Vermont displayed an 'equity index' on its state report card to help school and district leaders analyze the difference in postsecondary performance between students who have been historically underserved in schools and their wealthier peers.
Mississippi shares real-time clearinghouse data directly with districts through its state student information system and is training school and district leaders to use it.
Indiana combines two- and four-year enrollment statistics with employment data through its GPS (Graduates Prepared to Succeed) dashboard to paint a holistic picture of what happens to students after high school graduation, including non-degree pathways.
These efforts are a good start. But as every teacher, counselor or leader knows, real-time, disaggregated data is needed to meaningfully inform advising practices and interventions.
School leaders should advocate for access to their state's most recent student data. Almost every state has a direct contract with the clearinghouse. If feasible, they can also consider purchasing a StudentTracker subscription.
State education agencies nationwide need to follow the lead of states like Wisconsin and create better systems for sharing data as soon as they receive it. They should also form collaboratives with other state agencies like the department of labor to obtain data on students who enter the workforce directly after graduation. These agencies also need to join a coalition organized by the Council of Chief State Schools Officers, which is working with the Department of Defense to help standardize the process of sharing military enlistment data with school districts.
Partnerships with organizations like OneGoal, Education Strategy Group and the National College Attainment Network can complement school district efforts by providing robust data analysis expertise.
Developing a shared understanding of postsecondary enrollment patterns can inform schools' advising practices, course sequences and partnerships with local organizations, colleges and universities, community colleges and employers. More access to data means a more inclusive approach to postsecondary preparation and better access to pathways aligned with students' interests and workforce needs.
Disclosure: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and Heckscher Foundation for Children provide financial support to OneGoal and The 74.
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The report defines SCNC individuals as people between the ages of 18 and 64 years of age who stopped out of college for at least three terms prior to the start of the academic year and had not earned any credential. At the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, there were nearly 43.1 million SCNC students; of those, 37.6 million were working-age adults. Even with the recent increases in re-enrollment, the report cautions that the improvement represents less than 3% of working-age SCNC adults. So while it's true that fewer students stopped out of college year over year, that has not been enough to stem the overall growth of the SCNC population, which has risen in all 50 states and the District of Columbia over the last three years. Among those SCNC students returning to school in 2023-2024, 4.7% earned a credential — including certificates, associate's and bachelor's degrees — within their first year of re-enrollment, a slight improvement over the prior year; 14.1% did so within two years of their return. More women than men re-enroll in college after stopping out, but men have a slight advantage in the two-year rate of earning their first credential (14.2%) vs. 13.9% among women. Black and Hispanic students return to college after stopping out at equal or greater rates than their Asian and white peers. However, white and Asian returnees earn a credential after returning at higher rates than other racial/ethnic groups. The report recommends that states seeking to increase the percentage of adults with a post-secondary credential focus on two subgroups of students who've demonstrated better re-enrollment and completion outcomes than the SCNC group overall. Those are potential completers and recent stop-outs. Potential completers have already completed at least two years' worth of academic credits in the past decade; they constitute about 2.7 million (or 7.2%) of the SCNC population. Recent stop-outs are newly identified SCNC individuals — those students who have stopped out between January, 2022 and July, 2023; roughly 2.1 million students (about 5.6% of SCNC individuals) are in this group. Across the past three years, potential completers demonstrate a number of advantages in their college outcomes compared to the rest of the SCNC population. For example they are about three times more likely to re-enroll in college than other SCNC students. They are also more likely to earn a credential in their first year of return (8.4%) than the rest of the SCNC group (3.8%), an edge that grows when considering second-year credential rates (22% versus 12.2%). Recent stop-outs are much more likely to re-enroll than students who have been stopped out for a longer period, and they are also more likely to enroll at the same institution they previously attended rather than transfer to another school. This pattern suggests that outreach strategies might be targeted at these relatively recent students, particularly by community colleges, which is the sector to which SCNC students most often return. According to the report, about one out of four SCNC students earned a credential without ever re-enrolling in college. Although it does not quantify the reasons for this outcome, it's likely due primarily to the reverse transfer policies adopted by several states allowing students who've dropped out of two-year colleges to add the credits they later earn at a four-year school and then be retroactively awarded an associate's degree. A similar program is the Colorado Re-Engaged (CORE) initiative, where former students who've completed at least 70 credits towards their bachelor's degree but then dropped out of college are awarded an associate's degree. The report found that, despite having the twentieth-largest SCNC population, Colorado had the seventh-highest number of first credential earners, aided by the large number of associate degrees earned by SCNC individuals who had not re-enrolled. In other cases, colleges have removed barriers that may have prevented awarding degrees to students who've already earned the required credits. For example. some schools have ended their policy of withholding degrees from students who have unpaid fines or tuition bills. The report's bottom line is a mixture of good and bad news. It's encouraging to see an increase in students' re-engagement with college, but in the big scheme of things, that improvement represents only a relatively tiny share of the SCNC working adult population. Fewer students might be stopping out year over year, but their retention and the return of former drop-outs has not been enough to stop the growth of the SCNC population, which continues to rise nationwide. The NSCRC is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. It collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations to gather accurate longitudinal data that can be used to guide educational policy decisions. NSCRC analyzes data from 3,600 postsecondary institutions, which represented 97% of the nation's postsecondary enrollment in Title IV degree-granting institutions in the U.S., as of 2020. The 2025 Some College, No Credential report, the sixth in a series, was created with the support of Lumina Foundation.
