Imagine a principal tasked with reducing chronic absenteeism for her senior class. She relies on student data systems as a method for effectively advising students by analyzing attendance numbers, broken down by demographics. Now imagine that the most recent data is two years old. How can she address current challenges with stats from when the seniors were sophomores?

Fortunately, real-time attendance data is standard in most districts. Yet when it comes to understanding what happens to students after high school — trade school or college enrollment, persistence and completion — many schools are left with years-old, incomplete or nonexistent information. Without timely insights, schools cannot meaningfully evaluate or improve practices, interventions or partnerships.

Nationwide, schools are making concerted efforts to improve college and career outcomes, but they are hamstrung by data limitations. School and district leaders often turn to publicly available state report cards which provide a snapshot of postsecondary enrollment information. At best, these report cards include data from the previous year’s graduating class — though, in many cases, the snapshots are even older. This gap is a serious issue. School and district leaders, as well as the public, need timely access to this data to make informed decisions and improve college and career advising practices.

The National Student Clearinghouse database, containing enrollment and completion data from over 3,500 colleges nationwide, is shared with the vast majority of states three times a year and includes updates on the most recent graduating class. States could combine these statistics with, for example, employment data from their department of labor to offer school districts a comprehensive view of student outcomes after high school. However, most states fail to make clearinghouse data accessible in their publicly available report cards and, based on OneGoal’s experiences in seven states — Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan,  Texas and Wisconsin — this information is also not shared directly with districts.

Read the full article about advising students by Karla Robles and Andy Schmitz at The 74.