Giving Compass' Take:

• GreatSchools has worked to discover data that could paint a clearer picture for us on the amount of college preparation that students are receiving from their high schools. 

• How can GreatSchools collaborate with educators to help push other schools toward successful preparation?

• Learn more about just how many high schoolers honestly admit to feeling unprepared for college. 

In the past, states have used graduation rates and state standardized tests to measure high school success. Some states have looked at other measures of college readiness, such as SAT and ACT scores and Advanced Placement courses. Unfortunately, these measures are not great predictors of success in college.

With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, Congress took one step forward by requiring states to report college enrollment rates for every high school.

 For the first time, individual high schools will be able to measure success not just by students’ readiness for college as measured by tests, but whether they actually enrolled in college.

Too often, when students arrive in college, they aren’t academically prepared, need remedial coursework, and ultimately drop out. A deeper understanding of high school effectiveness requires a complete picture of students’ readiness for, access to, and success in postsecondary education.

Over the past year, GreatSchools has worked to unlock data that give a new view of just how well high schools are helping their students get to college, and do well once they enroll. After reaching out to the education agencies of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, we found only nine states that publish accessible school-level data on both college enrollment rates and how well students fare in college, including remediation rates and how many persist into their second year.

Based on the data, today we’re announcing the College Success Award, which celebrates 814 high schools in these states where students have graduated, entered college, and had success in higher education at significantly higher rates than students from other schools in their states.

With the College Success Award, we’re able to, for the first time, celebrate school success as measured by methods other than test scores alone.

Read the full article about using data to prepare high schoolers for college by Samantha Olivieri at The 74