The Role of Data in Virginia’s College Readiness Initiative

1. The Role of Data in Virginia’s College Readiness Initiative Marshall W. Garland Deborah L. Jonas. Ph.D. Chrys Dougherty, Ph.D. Anne Ware, Ph.D. Presentation at the 24th Annual Management Information Systems (MIS) Conference Session X-G February 24, 2011 1

2. Virginia’s College and Career Readiness Initiative • Designed to: • Ensure that college-ready standards in reading, writing, and mathematics are taught in each Virginia high school classroom. • Strengthen students’ preparation for college and the workforce before leaving high school. • Virginia’s ongoing research program guides the state’s efforts to: • Develop policy, programs, and coursework to support higher achievement for Virginia’s students.

3. Research Purpose and Approach • Purpose: • Understand the associations between students’ high school outcomes and their postsecondary enrollment patterns and outcomes. • Data sources: • VDOE’s administrative data for high school students • Postsecondary enrollment data VDOE acquired from the National Student Clearinghouse. • Student-level data for postsecondary course placement and outcomes provided by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). • Analytic methods: • Descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression

4. Virginia’s Initial Studies • Focused on associations between high school outcomes and enrollment in institutions of higher education (IHE). • Relied on data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC). • The majority of students who enrolled directly in four-year colleges persisted into the second year, which was considered a success. • These analyses did not clarify the associations between high school and postsecondary outcomes in two-year colleges.

5. What Virginia Learned from Analysis of Postsecondary Enrollment Data *Based on preparation for success in four-year schools. In Virginia, few students enrolled in four-year schools require remediation.

6. Merging Records from K-12 and Higher Education • VDOE and SCHEV have a mutually agreed upon methodology that links de-identified student data between agencies. • Individual students who have common identifiers in the K-12 and higher education data systems are given a random, but unique, identifier. • This methodology is enabling Virginia to build a federated data system that will automate the linking process used for this research.

7. *The de-identified data set does not contain any information that can be linked to individual citizens. It contains a random number that permits the two data sets to be merged, but the number itself cannot be used to identify individuals.

8. Current Project • Focuses on: • Students who enrolled in Virginia’s postsecondary institutions. • Understanding high school outcomes associated with enrollment and success in credit bearing versus non credit-bearing (developmental) courses. • In Virginia, public colleges and universities are, by law, not permitted to offer developmental courses. • Primary focus of current work is course placement in 2-year institutions and course outcomes in 2- and 4-year institutions.

9. The Data • High school class of 2008 • State assessment data • Graduation/completion credentials • Demographics • Postsecondary data for Fall 2008 entering cohort • Both student level and student-course-semester level • Course-level enrollment records and grades in math and English courses

10. Initial Merge Verification • Used key variables from VDOE and SCHEV data sets as additional data verification • Birth month/year (high school to higher education) • Gender (high school to higher education) • Reporting period (postsecondary semester) • Other demographics within the postsecondary files (enrollment demographics to course enrollment data) • IHE unique identifier

11. What can we learn from these data?

12. Nearly 60% of first-year students at Virginia public 2-year IHEs enrolled in a developmental course (DC). • More students enrolled in developmental math than developmental English courses. • No students participate in developmental coursework in Virginia’s four-year public IHEs.

13. Among students who enrolled in either a 2-year or 4-year IHE, students who took the Algebra I SOL later in their secondary tenure are more likely to enroll in a math DC than students who took the exam earlier.* *NOTE: Virginia’s English SOL is typically taken in the 11th grade. Analysis would not be comparable.

14. At 2- or 4-year IHEs, students who earned a standard diploma were more likely to enroll in a developmental course than students who earned an advanced diploma. • Approximately 11% of students who earned an advanced diploma were placed in developmental courses.

15. At 2- or 4-year IHEs, students who earn advanced proficient scores on the respective SOL tests were much less likely to enroll in developmental courses compared to those who passed at the proficient level. • Diploma type (Advanced Studies or Standard) also makes a difference.

16. At 2-or 4-year IHEs, the association between SOL score and the likelihood of developmental course placement holds even after controlling for other student-level variables. Math Developmental Course Enrollment English Developmental Course Enrollment

17. At 2-or 4-year IHEs, after controlling for student characteristics, Hispanic students had a higher estimated probability of enrolling in an English DC. • These differences remained once English language proficiency (LEP) status was incorporated. • The gaps narrow considerably among students who achieved Advanced Proficiency. English Developmental Course Enrollment

18. SOL performance was significantly associated with the likelihood of persistence at a 4-year IHE. SOL performance was not a significant predictor of persistence at a 2-year IHE.

19. Among 2-year IHE enrollees, achieving Advanced Proficiency on the Algebra I SOL erases the persistence gap between economically disadvantaged and non-economically disadvantaged students.

20. Summary and Next Steps • Merging high school and postsecondary data is helping Virginia understand the outcomes needed to be prepared for credit-bearing college courses. • Policymakers are using this information to inform policy and program decisions. • Analysis is ongoing with greater focus on: • Persistence into the second year • Course outcomes (grades) in postsecondary • Refining student subgroup analyses • The research is conducted with full support from Virginia’s policymakers. • Working with nationally recognized experts adds credibility to VDOE’s initiative. • Virginia’s LDS grant from IES makes this work possible!

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