Tracking how students succeed

Does taking advancement placement courses in high school really make a difference in college? And what about ACT scores — can they really predict how well a student will do at a university?

Those questions are at the top of the list for higher education officials who will soon begin tracking Utah's high school students as they transition from high school to college. The system will allow education leaders to follow individual students and gather data on where students go from high school, whether they transfer to different colleges and how long it takes them to get a degree.

"Right now, much of the data that's available is just guess work," said David Feitz, associate executive director of the Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority. With the new program, "They can know exactly where students are enrolled and see which ones have dropped out."

The StudentTracker program, which cost the Utah System of Higher Education about $50,000, will be available to all Utah high schools, as well as public and private colleges and universities.

Although colleges do track enrollment rates and other general information, the new system will track each student by social security number so administrators can see whether a student who took certain classes in high school was able to get into college or if they were able to finish college earlier.

"More and more people are asking for accountability, but we need more information," Commissioner of Higher Education Rich Kendell said.

Tracking students better will also promote a recent effort by public and higher education officials to make the transition from high school to college more seamless and effective, Kendell added. The partnership has already spawned ideas of a Regents Diploma for students who have taken a certain load of general education classes in high school.

Being able to follow students who earned a Regents Diploma could better advise education officials on whether more stringent curriculum requirements in high school translate into success at a university.

"This is general education. It's a block of courses that has to be looked at as an aggregate. It's students who take the whole experience," Kendell said. "Many students are choosing courses that do not prepare them for college."

Kendell said that the data could also be used to see where students are getting held up while working toward degrees. Some students are not able to get into majors because pre-requisite courses are full, he said, and the data could show where those bottlenecks are.

The data could also be used to target minorities to show colleges where they need to beef up outreach efforts, Feitz said. High schools could also use the information to see what majors students are pursuing and could then tailor high school courses toward better preparation for those careers, he said.

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