News Release
For Immediate Release: February 6, 2012
Contact: Charles Pyle, Director of Communications, (804) 371-2420
Julie C. Grimes, Communications Manager, (804) 225-2775
New reports available on the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) website provide information on postsecondary enrollment and achievement of Virginia high school graduates. The reports, which were developed in collaboration with the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, connect student-level data from K-12 and postsecondary information systems. Their release is a milestone in the state’s effort to improve the quality of data on educational outcomes available to researchers, educators, policymakers and the public.
“For the first time, we are able to link the high school records of individual students to higher education student data, while protecting privacy and keeping personal information secure,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright said. “These reports present a clearer picture of the success of schools, school divisions and the commonwealth in preparing young Virginians for postsecondary education and training.”
The data in the reports represent the best available estimates about postsecondary enrollment and achievement for Virginia high school graduates. State-level, division-level and school-level reports are available for all student subgroups.
Postsecondary enrollment reports provide the number and percent of Virginia high school graduates who enrolled in a public or private college or university anywhere in the United States within 16 months of graduation.
Postsecondary achievement reports present the number and percent of Virginia high school graduates who enrolled in a public Virginia college or university and earned at least one year of college credit within two years of postsecondary enrollment.
According to the data available on the postsecondary enrollment reports, 62 percent of class of 2011 graduates who earned either a standard or advanced diploma enrolled in college within 16 months of leaving high school.
Data in the postsecondary achievement reports are currently limited to the class of 2008 and show that 67 percent of students who earned either a standard or advanced diploma and subsequently enrolled in a Virginia public college or university earned at least one year of college credit within two years of enrollment.
The development of the reports was supported by the $17.5 million federal longitudinal data grant VDOE received in 2010 and satisfies a reporting requirement of the 2009 federal stimulus act.
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