The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center has released the 2024 High School Benchmarks report, which shows small improvements in college enrollment and persistence in public high school graduates. Data showed no change between 2022 and 2023 high school graduates when it came to immediately enrolling in college, but there was an increase of 3.2 percentage points between 2021 and 2022 graduates across nearly all high school characteristics in terms of enrolling in college within a year of graduation.
“The report doesn’t grab the motivations of the students,” said Jennifer Causey, a senior research associate at the National Student Clearinghouse. “It could be with COVID and with the gap year, you’re seeing some different trends.”
Unfortunately, there remains a persistent gap between low-income students and students at low poverty high schools. In 2023, 50.5% of students graduating from high poverty high schools immediately enrolled in college versus 73.3% of students from low poverty high schools. There was improvement for high poverty high school graduates when it came to enrolling within a year, increasing from 50.5% from the class of 2021 to 53.7% for the class of 2022. High minority high schools showed a similar upward progression from 55.9% for 2021 graduates to 58.1% for 2022.
Paula Dofat, a long-time college counselor, college funding strategist and founder of the HBCU Money Guide™, said that the data corresponds with her personal experience. Dofat was senior director of college counseling at Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (a charter school) and has worked at both low-resourced schools and at an elite country day school.
“There’s a disparity because of dollars,” Dofat said, noting that resources for students at an urban school would be limited to what was available at the school and there is a disparity in resources provided to schools based on location. At the country day school, in addition to school resources students’ parents would utilize private tutors and other outside support services. Those students also had access to test preparation for ACT and SAT examinations.
The report showed that first to second year college persistence rates also trended upward from class of 2020 to class of 2021, but a gap between the graduates of high minority high schools and low minority high schools continued. When it came to six-year college graduation rates, 2017 high school graduates from high minority schools graduated college at 31.5% and those from low minority schools at 48.5%.
“It’s one thing for students to enroll and step foot in college; it’s a completely different story to make sure that a student stays enrolled and ultimately decides to complete a college credential,” Causey said. “Persistence is a notion of optimism because seeing more students decide to stay in post-secondary education means that there could be signs that they’re continuing to try to get that degree.”
Disparities between low and higher income high schools exist across postsecondary education with students who graduated from higher income high schools enrolling, persisting and completing college at higher rates than those from low income high schools. These disparities exist at both two-year and four-year institutions. Causey noted it is important to not only speak of gaps, but show concrete numbers. Both high schools and postsecondary institutions can then examine ways to close those gaps.
“This provides a really great picture of looking through the entire [college] pipeline process—whether you’re getting students to even enter through the door, whether you’re getting them to persist from the first year to the second year, which is a really important hurdle, and then ultimately down the line are they able to earn that credential,” said Causey. “By looking at it through the lens of different high school graduate characteristics—whether it be low income or higher income or poverty levels—you can see where there are gaps and where maybe extra resources can be leveraged to help students in need.”
Dofat said the data can be quite useful and can propel schools to partner in more meaningful and intentional ways with community-based organizations that offer supports that the schools cannot due to budget constraints.
“Bring together all the stakeholders,” said Dofat. “There needs to be key people from school districts, there need to be people on the ground who are in the schools fully delivering the curriculum. Not just principals and assistant principals, but teachers. There also need to be parents and guardians. In addition to that, the community-based organizations that are providing support to students need to be involved as well. There needs to be, in my opinion, sort of a thinktank. Also, bring in schools that are doing it well and getting great outcomes.”
Dofat said that it was important to look at national and state data and then figure out how best to use the resources available. She also suggested that community colleges and state public four-year institutions be involved to create more seamless transfers.
“That transition could be important, especially in places where there may have been a lack of resources for [high school] education,” Dofat said. “Community colleges could possibly be that bridge, but it’s going to take the high schools, the community colleges and the four-year colleges to work together to figure out how to make that happen.”