Whitney Tilson's School Reform Blog: Only 15 percent of HISD freshmen graduate college

Kudos to Houston for tracking and reporting this horrifying data: only 15% of 9^th graders will earn a college degree of any sort within four years (the more common six-year number is certainly higher, but not much I'd bet). Below is a blog post:

The Houston school board heard a sobering statistic this morning: Only 15 percent of the school district's ninth-graders had college degrees four years after high school graduation day. This isn't an estimate (UPDATE: It's partly an estimate. See explanation below). This number tracks actual students from HISD with the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit that partners with public and private colleges. The only data we've had before is from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and that includes only those students who stay in state, so this is powerful information — which I'd like to see other school districts compile as well.

Page 4 of the plan shows what happens to Houston's 9^th graders. (Doing some simple math shows what a dead-end 2-year colleges are: only 8.1% of those who enroll in 2-year colleges have earned a postsecondary degree within four years.

Page 6, shows how one can track whether students are on-track, and the massively higher college graduation rate for students who go off to college properly prepared (this reinforces page 45 of my school reform presentation (www.tilsonfunds.com/Personal/TheCriticalNeedforGenuineSchoolReform.pdf), which shows that virtually all college-ready students, across all ethnicities, are going to college – the problem is that so few students, especially low-income and minority ones, are properly prepared).

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