We believe our College Tracking data is a critically important outcome indicator of how well Washington State schools are preparing students to attend, persist, and graduate from college. Several newspaper articles in the last few weeks compare graduation data from our College Tracking website with national data. When interpreting college graduation data from College Tracking, it is important to recognize some of the major differences between the data presented on College Tracking and what national organizations, such as the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), report.
- Different denominators. NCES uses the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), which contains information collected directly from colleges. When NCES analyzes the data from all participating colleges, they are not tracking recent high school graduates exclusively, but instead they use “first-time” college students. This means that the students in their database did not necessarily just graduate from high school; they could just be enrolling in college for the first time. In contrast, since we are particularly focused on the K-12 system, we are collecting the data directly from Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) and are tracking a particular Washington State high school graduating class over time. When NCES reports their college graduation rates, they are not reporting on a high school graduating class, but rather are reporting on students already enrolled in college (i.e. first-time enrollees). Our data differs from this because we report on the high school graduating class and report what percentage of the high school graduating class complete a college degree within a certain period.
- Different enrollment status. Another difference between College Tracking college graduation rates and NCES reported rates is that NCES is typically reporting on full-time students only whereas we do not limit our database to just full-time students.
- Different degree-completion rules. NCES only reports the degree completion when the degree is completed at (a) the same institution a student initially enrolls in and (b) within six years for four-year schools or within three-years for two-year schools. In our system, it does not matter if they stay at a particular institution and we measure completion within five years whether it is from a two-year or four-year college.
For more information on NCES and how they calculate college completion please refer to their website and the most recent report from them with this information: The Condition of Education 2011.
Kari Peterson, Ph.D. Director of Research
Kari M. Peterson is the Director of Research for The BERC Group; she joined The BERC Group in 2006. She has a background in social science and education and has been conducting research in public schools since 2002. Previously, she worked as a Research Associate with the Washington School Research Center (WSRC). While at the WSRC, Dr. Peterson cultivated an interest and expertise in working with large datasets, performing statistical analyses, and writing technical reports. For The BERC Group, Dr. Peterson is involved in developing and leading a variety of program evaluation and research projects. She also leads professional development for teachers around the STAR Protocol and Powerful Teaching and Learning. Dr. Peterson has extensive experience processing and analyzing a variety of data including Powerful Teaching and Learning data, student achievement data, and College Tracking data, among others. Dr. Peterson has had the opportunity to visit thousands of classrooms as part of her work at The BERC Group and is deeply interested in factors that improve student learning in the classroom. She is also very committed to providing schools, districts, and organizations with a useful and objective third-party review of their programs. Her other professional interests include designing evaluation and research projects, survey development, statistical methods and analyses for large datasets, and providing useful feedback to schools regarding program effectiveness.
