Local students more likely to earn degrees

Based on a report by Reeve Hamilton, Texas Tribune

 Donley County youth beat the state statistic in a recent study of kids who go on to earn a higher education credential with six years of graduating high school.

Among young Texans who started eighth grade in 2000, less than one-fifth went on to earn a higher education credential, according to data analyzed by two state education agencies and presented last Tuesday in a Texas Tribune news application.

However, the application revealed that of the 60 students in Donley County who began 8th grade in 2000 – students who are now in their 20s — 33.3 percent received a higher education degree or certificate within six years of their anticipated high school graduation date.

That rate is 13.9 percentage points higher than the statewide rate

Donley County students also beat the regional data which found that of 5,887 eighth graders served by Region 16 in 2000 in the Texas Panhandle, only 20.3 percent received a college degree or certificate, which was just more than one percentage point higher than the state rate.

Local students also beat neighboring county higher education achievement rates, including Armstrong 16.0, Briscoe 20.0, Carson 31.5, Collingsworth 9.6, Hall 26.9, Gray 24.1, and Childress 28.4.

Most students from nearby counties fared better with eighth graders who started in 2001. Donley County’s rate stayed at 33.3 percent, Armstrong rose to 22.6, Briscoe came up to 26.1, Carson was closest to Donley at 33.0, Collingsworth rose considerably to 31.7, Hall fell to 10.5, Gray was just above even at 24.5, and Childress dropped slightly to 24.5

The highest local performing class in the study range 1997-2001, were eighth graders who started in 1998. Of the 54 students in that cohort, 38.9 percent earned a college degree or certification, beating the state rate for that class by more than 20 points.

Clarendon College President Dr. Robert Riza said the success of local students is helped by the presence of a community college at home but that other factors also contribute.

“This shows the fine job the ISDs are doing and the importance of the college working closely with the ISDs,” Riza said. “It also goes back to the community itself and the focus families place on education.”

Since 2012, Houston Endowment, a philanthropic foundation and sponsor of the news app, has advocated for the use of “cohort tracking” to evaluate the state’s education pipeline. The analysis begins with all Texas students entering eighth grade in a given year and follows them for 11 years, giving them six years after high school to earn a post-secondary degree.

George Grainger, senior program officer for Houston Endowment’s education initiatives, said he believes it’s a valid performance index for the entire education pipeline, not just higher education. “We felt if we put our name on this, we can talk about it in a way that a state agency is perhaps not able to,” he said.

Cohort tracking is something the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board had been doing for some time — but quietly. Houston Endowment approached the agency about running the numbers again and providing an annual snapshot of the education system, this time for public consumption.

Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes called the idea of using the simple, easy-to-understand metric — rather than standard metrics like college graduation rates — “a minor act of genius.”

“If your final number is 19 out of 100 students receiving some form of post-secondary credential, you know there’s an awful lot of leakage in the pipeline,” Paredes said.

Houston Endowment is careful not to be prescriptive in its cohort analysis.

“We’re very careful in saying that we don’t know what the goal for the state should be for this index,” Grainger said, “nor are we saying how to get there.”

But he acknowledged that “intuitively,” the fact that just one out of five Texas students completes a post-secondary degree is “not what Texas needs, not what the kids of Texas need, not what employers need.”

Texas’ data collection isn’t perfect. The cohort analysis, for example, does not account for some productive post-secondary endeavors, such as military service and apprenticeship programs.

Plus, if students move out of state, the system loses track of them until they move back in — meaning those who attend out-of-state colleges or universities and don’t return aren’t counted.

This omission could be corrected, Grainger said, but Texas does not currently pay to access National Student Clearinghouse data.