A new study, with coverage in the Denver Post and EdNews Colorado (longer and more detail). The take away:
A first-of-its-kind study tracking Denver Public Schools’ students six years after high school graduation shows just 56 percent enrolled even briefly in college and far fewer earned a degree of any kind.
For Hispanic students and those from poor families, who make up the majority of DPS’ graduates, the numbers are worse.
Only 45 percent of low-income students who graduated from Denver high schools went on to any college and only 39 percent of Hispanic students did. Of those, more than half in each group dropped out within six years. [...]
The study found that all DPS graduates who entered college were less likely to obtain a degree than similar districts nationally. Of DPS graduates who entered community college, 49 percent were still in school after 3 years and 6 percent graduated.
Unfortunately (to me anyway) the study does not appear (confession – I skimmed it) to link proficiency data. Here is recent 10th grade DPS data (the percent of students at or above proficiency). The annual increase is 1.1 points:
2006: 43.6%
2007: 42.7%
2008: 45.8%
To me, the reaction to the study comprises more hand-wringing than it should. While I’m sure we will enter into the same cauldron of social factors, it’s pretty clear that most DPS graduates are not prepared for college, which in my mind is probably a (the?) primary reason why they both don’t attend and don’t finish.
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I was so impressed by the numbers published, that I sent the article to one of our daughters, at UNC. (Girls who grow up in Bailey always think there is “more life in town.”) Here are the words of the college student in response:
“What they SHOULD do is, during Senior year of High School, offer an elective called “Real World.” Everyone in the class will take the same spelling test, and regardless of getting all of them right or wrong, everyone gets “paid” 85%. You redo your spelling test to get them all right, your “employer” pats you on the back and says good job, but it doesn’t matter — you still get an 85%. You work even harder, stay after school, read extra books, and keep progressing, but you are stuck with the 85%.. He simply tells you that the budget won’t allow for it, even though he wants to.
At the end of the semester, anyone who “quits” gets no credit for the class, and those who kiss ass for a few months get “promoted” to 90%. But don’t forget when minimum wage increases! Everyone who didn’t get “promoted” earlier in the year will now get boosted to 89% … but if you got promoted, too bad! You’re still at 90%, and have just gotten screwed by your employer.
Now THAT’S the real world. Don’t you wish they actually taught this to people before they had to deal with it on their own?”
I wouldn’t even try to rephrase those thoughts, her essential point is: school is easy. It’s life without it, that’s hard.
Alexander, your conclusion is correct, but the data you provide are skewed high because these are district-wide averages. The tail for 10th graders is much darker. For 10th grade students taking the CSAP in 2008, 16% were proficient in math, 28% were proficient in writing, and 46% were proficient in reading. While I have no idea what proficient means when the writing sample is evaluated by a high school graduate making $8 per hour in Indiana, I am willing to bet that you don’t have a snowball’s chance at the BBQ of getting through your freshman year if you are below proficient.
Alexander, I appreciate you linking college success to CSAP proficiency data. It’s important so we know what CSAP really tells us about students. If most students were below proficient on CSAP but did well in college, we should reevaluate the test. If vice versa is the true, again, reevaluate the test.
I’m sure it can go both ways within individual student data. I just want to add some anecdotal evidence to problematize the link between CSAP and college readiness and to call into question Christopher’s last comment.
I have seen plenty of kids who would do well in college score below proficient on the CSAP for a number of reasons. Kids are jaded by the test and therefore write beautifully creative essays about why the CSAP is pointless instead of writing to the assigned prompt. They write a big “F You” across the writing section. They get test anxiety after being tested for three days straight. It’s pretty hard to do well on a test when sitting in a desk, filling in bubbles for eight hours a day with a bunch of peers they don’t know very well and feeling like every question they don’t know is a sign of their stupidity.
I know plenty of students who both scored below proficient on their 9th or 10th grade CSAP and would perform brilliantly in college classrooms that ask them to think critically. The question is simply whether they’ll get there or not, because of money, citizenship status, or other issues of access.
I don’t doubt the veracity of Gwen’s ancedotal evidence, but I also don’t think the numbers are significant. How many “smart but don’t care” 10th graders could have done well on the CSAP but chose to write “F You”? 50? 100? There were 4,243 10th graders who took the CSAP in 2008 – let’s go nuts and say 10% (or 424) fit that category – so total proficiency jumps to, um, 55% (and if Chris’s numbers are right, math proficiency is about 25%). Personally I think the correct number is probably a rounding error.
The other social factors that determine access are undoubtedly higher, but I think both that there is ample overlap with a lack of proficiency, and that it is unlikely that any single factor is greater.